The Unsung Hero - Suzanne Brockman

Navy SEAL Tom Paoletti knew it was going to hurt when the Seahawk he, his team and the object of their rescue mission had fled blew. He hadn't realised that the resulting concussion, combined with an ill-advised heated argument Rear Admiral Tucker, would result in a forced recuperation period away from his hand-picked team.
But maybe going home for a few days wouldn't hurt - except that, collecting his luggage at Logan, Tom saw a man who really, really reminded him of a terrorist he tracked for four months in '96. The Merchant was supposed to be dead, and Massachusetts is hardly a terrorist hotbed, but Tom couldn't shake the feeling that, with a couple of cosmetic surgery alterations, it was his man. Tom reported the sighting, then tried to put it out of his mind, focusing instead on the small town where he grew up. Seeing his niece, Mallory, would be worth the trip and forced time off, and catching up with his great-uncle Joe was always a pleasure.
Plus there was the possibility of seeing Kelly, the girl next door now all grown up, daughter of Joe's best friend Charles. And then he saw the Merchant again, this time in his tiny hometown of Baldwin's Bridge. Is this a product of a serious concussion, or is there really an international terrorist plotting, undetected, on the US East coast?
Well, of course it's the latter, but the uncertainty is beautifully written and comprises only one strand of a meticulously, seamlessly woven tapestry that involves plots about Joe and Charles' World War 2 history, two current romances, one long lost love, personal growth and coming of age, substance over style, the pettiness of small town bigotry and the triumph of rationality and intellect, and a celebration of fantasy/science fiction and graphic art. That's on top of convincing dialogue, realistic characters, strong women, and some really lovely sex scenes (including a hot, public places/near discovery moment).
The Unsung Hero is an homage to the men and women who fought in the Second World War and, unusually for an American novel, this includes the French and the Brits. Joe and Charles' history is woven through the contemporary text, as painful and immediate as the unfolding events Tom's experiencing.
The Unsung Hero is the first in a fifteen book (so far) series about a connected group of Navy SEALS looking for love. I find the books, which I've just discovered I haven't reviewed, particularly satisfying because of the overlapping, intertwining arcs - in each novel there are visits from past central protagonists, the beginnings of new relationships, and a harmonious, supportive, joyous relationship. The ending is neither unconvincingly tied up nor cliff hanger-y, and one of the many joys of this series is the knowledge that previous characters and relationships will appear in support of the larger cast and evolving big picture. I've thus far found this series without exception to be layered, nuanced, beautifully crafted, meticulously plotted, enjoyable and deeply satisfying. - Alex

The Troubleshooters series:
The Unsung Hero; Defiant Hero; Over the Edge; Out of Control; Into the Night; Gone too Far; Flashpoint; Hot Target; Breaking Point; Into the Storm; Force of Nature; All Through the Night; Into the Fire; Dark of Night; Hot Pursuit;Breaking the Rules

Eagle Day - Robert Muchamore

As the Germans invade Paris, British spy Charles Henderson, along with French orphan Marc Kilgour and English siblings Paul and Rosie Clarke, must make a difficult decision - flee to the relative safety of Spain and from there return to London, or infiltrate a Nazi boat yard in the hopes of uncovering and possibly sabotaging the invaders plans to defeat Britain.
I ended my review of The Escape, Muchamore's first part of this series, itself a prequel to the best-selling CHERUBs series, noting that I hoped the whole Henderson Boys series wouldn't be a chain of cliff-hangers. Though less the case here than in the Escape, this series is clearly destined to be less stand alone that the contemporary one. I suppose, given the work the series needs to do in forming a platform for the later, established organisation, this is inevitable and I have resigned myself to it.
This resignation is made easier by the compensations of strong characterisation, vibrant writing, a perfect encompassing of time and place blended with an immediacy born of its historical setting, and a brisk plot.
Muchamore infuses the novel with historical accuracy, footnoting translations for German and French terms rather than substituting their English equivalents, and interspersing sections with a brief update of the bigger picture of the war. The facts are succinct and digestible, and I imagine would be well assimilate by young readers rather than being seen as boring pedagogy.
I do enjoy the original series better, and am quite excited by the prospect of another CHERUB installment in my To Read pile, but making my way through Eagle Day was no hardship and I'll certainly continue on for the time being. - Alex

The Escape - Robert Muchamore

Marc Kilgour was abandoned at a railway station as an infant - the only life he's known is at the orphanage, where he and the other children must work for the simple food and barely adequate clothing, along with beatings for every infraction, they receive from the director. Twelve-year old Marc works for a nearby farmer, mucking out the cows sheds of the hundred and twenty litres of urine and loose feces each adult cow produces daily. When Marc tussles with the farmer's attractive daughter Jae, with whom he's slightly in love, she falls in a pit filled with this excrement, and Marc receives the beating of his life. When a German bomber crashes alongside the orphanage that evening Marc seizes inspiration and runs away.
Paul Clarke and his sister Rosie have been going to the English school in Paris because that's what their French mother wanted, and although most families have evacuated their father has waited until the tanks were at the edge of the country to leave. Ostensibly a clerk, Mr Clarke has secret papers that must get to London is the Allies have any hope of winning the war. When he pulls them out of school he seems unprepared for a flight, which results in the deaths of their landlady, a German soldier, and sadly Mr Clarke. Paul and Rosie are alone and surrounded by the population of a city fleeing ahead of an invading force.
This precursor to Muchamore's best selling CHERUB series begins the tale of how Englishman Charles Henderson set up a secret organisation that uses children as spies - it can easily be read by those unfamiliar with the initial series, but can hardly be said to stand alone.
Muchamore has brought the vibrancy of atmosphere, depth of character and rapidity of plot to this new series that the CHERUB books are known for. He conveys a strong sense of France on the brink of invasion in June 1940, from the use of child labour and casual corporal punishment to the looming threat of German occupation and pervasive hope that things won't really change that much. His children are courageous, determined and predominantly moral, though realistically and humanly flawed, and they undergo significant punishment, both physical and emotional.
I was, however, disappointed to find that The Escape, unlike each of the CHERUB novels, is not complete in itself but ends on a cliffhanger that demands the next book be read. Though I had, and have, every intention of doing so anyway, I really resent this approach whenever I come across it, and doing so twice in a month didn't help. I do hope that this won't be the case for the entire series of Henderson's Boys. - Alex

Bones of Betrayal – Jefferson Bass

Bill Brockton, head of the world famous Bone Farm, is participating in a terrorism safety drill when he’s called to a death in nearby Oak Ridge, the birth place of nuclear weaponry. A body lies in a motel pool, covered with a foot of green ice. Leonard Novak is frozen solid but it’s when the nuclear scientist’s body begins to defrost that things really take off.
I generally prefer encountering plot twists without too much warning, so though this occurs really early in the novel I don’t want to disclose much more of the plot. I can say that the novel compelling involves both contemporary issues and events from the build up to the end of the Second World War.
Bill is a really satisfying character – a little goofy, intelligent, self-aware and funny, I suspect he incorporates many traits that the authors possess. He (and therefore they) seamlessly incorporates details about forensic anthropology into the narrative, informing and maintaining interest while advancing the fairly intricate plot. The other characters are nuanced and rounded, particularly Bill’s grad assistant Miranda and potential love interest Isabella Morgan, an Oak Ridge librarian who bar a staggering resemblance to Bill’s murdered lover. I really like how her involvement allows Bill’s grief to progress, and how realistically this loss is portrayed.
Perhaps the most interesting character portrayal is the way details of Novak’s life are posthumously revealed, emerging like a negative in a developing bath. The stand out character, though, is Novak’s ex-wife, Beatrice. Now ninety, the former Oak Ridge employee is quirky, interesting, an unreliable but charming narrator who, either directly or through information she imparts, is the source of most of the plot twists. In many ways I hope to be like her at that age – selectively senile, lively, determined, winsome and intelligent to the end.
Bones of Betrayal is the fourth fictional collaboration of forensic anthropologist Bill Bass and journalist/writer Jon Jefferson. There’s no sign of complacency or writing for the sake or either deadline or profit – the writing is crisp and compelling, the plot original and absorbing, and the characters shine. The next Bill Brockton novel will be on my Must Read list. - Alex

The Bill Brockton series:
Carved in Bone
Flesh and Bone
The Devil’s Bones
Bones of Betrayal
The Bone Yard
The Bone Thief

The 'Caine' Mutiny - Herman Wouk

Willis "Willie" Keith has been fairly protected, sheltered from the harsher realities of life by his doting yet domineering mother. Fearful of being drafted into the Army, Willie signs up as a midshipman, hoping to miss the War altogether. After an eventful beginning Willie is assgned to the USS Caine, a WWI destroyer turned minesweeper.
Willie has never seen Navy life as being real, and he fails to take his assignments seriously, starting with his response when he misses his rendezvous with the Caine. When he finally catch up with her Willlie discovers that the Caine is barely held together, both physically and disciplinarily, a situation he attributes to the captain. Between his contempt for the Navy in general, and De Vriess in particular, Willie falls foul of him and, unable to acknowledge that the incident was his own doing, sulks and blames his superior.
When De Vriess is relieved Willie is ecstatic - the new captain is determined, military and thorough. It doesn't take long, though, for Willie to discover that Queeg is manipulative, bullying and petty, and he quickly loses the respect of his crew. Hidebound by the rules, and apparently terrified of doing wrong, or at least of being seen to do wrong, Queeg is inept, distracted from the big picture by little trivialties, furious if crossed, and a coward.
This last is the deciding factor in turning Queeg's officers against him, and when Queeg conducts an inquiry into the disappearance of a quart of strawberries, reliving a triumph of his early years, the disquiet turns to mutiny. Keefer, an intellectual passing time as Communications Officer while writing a novel, sows the seeds, suggesting that Queeg is mentally ill and implying that he ought to be relieved as unfit for duty. Maryk, second in command, begins secretly keeping a log book of all Queeg's strange behaviour and, in the midst of a severe typhoon, with Queeg apparently unable to make an independant decision, Maryk relieves his captain, supported by the officers on deck.
Though it only occupies the tail end of the book, Maryks' court martial and its aftermath constitute the meat of The 'Caine' Mutiny. While the lead up to that point, including what led Willie to the ship, is obviously necessary for the mutiny to have any power, I felt the long and somewhat rambling first half dated the novel, though this wasn't something I noticed when I first read it, over a decade ago. I just kept thinking how much better a tighter version of the text would be, with less focus on Willie and his pre-'Caine' life - his domineering mother, doomed (or is it?) love affair with the night club singing daughter of Italian immigrants, casual disregard of the Navy as real, and piano-playing gifts, all unquestionably contribute to his role in the lead up to the mutiny and to the mutiny itself, but the parts of the books that sang for me were those that dealt with the increasingly eccentric Queeg, and the court martial scenes. In comparison with their vibrancy, the rest of the novel felt like it was just marking time.
I'm glad I reread what I recalled being an interesting and captivating novel of psychological drama, but I don't think I'll need to read it again. - Alex

Dream When You’re Feeling Blue – Elizabeth Berg

Kitty Heaney, oldest daughter of three girls and two boys, is a little disappointed when her beau, Julian, is shipped overseas to fight without proposing, particularly as her younger sister Louise is engaged in all but name to Michael. As the impact of the war hits America increasingly hard, Kitty begins to transform from a self-absorbed girl into a woman who thinks before she acts and is aware of her impact on those around her. She leaves her office job to work in a manufacturing plant, to the ruin of her nails and the shock of her mother. She discovers that if letter writing is hard it may be because the feelings you think you have don’t really exist, and that other people can have feelings (and do things) you never guessed at. And she discovers that you can make sacrifices for those you love at great cost to yourself, sacrifices nobody else is ever aware of.
Opening in the early months of America’s entry into the Second World War, Dream When You’re Feeling Blue mirrors the nation’s loss of innocence with Kitty’s journey. Fiction is often a more resonant way of learning about the past than non-fiction, and Berg has woven substantial facts about the era into the prose, incorporating them into the substance of the text, so that (for example) the reader comes away with an impression not just the reality of rationing, women transitioning into non-traditional parts of the workforce, or changing mores, but the affects of these on the day-to-day lives of people. One aspect that I’d never really considered was the unrelenting impact on young children – as Kitty says,

the children’s programs on the radio offered no relief [from images of war and reminders to contribute to the war effort]: the Captain Midnight oath exhorting young listeners "to save my country from the dire peril it faces or perish in the attempt." Superman, with his long distance hearing and X-ray vision and supersonic flying speed, was now tracking down spies, as were the Green Hornet and Tom Mix.

Berg’s characters are real and rounded and complex. The Irish Catholic love of and for family resonates through Dream When You’re Feeling Blue, and informs the somewhat unexpected conclusion some sixty years after the novel opens. Lynn and I don't usually look at other people's opinions about the books we read, but I was interested in how others felt about the ending. I went to goodreads.com, where the response was indeed mixed. One review, cyears, articulates the issue perfectly:

Yes, if this were a romance, the ending would suck. But it's not. It's a character study of how an Irish-American family coped during the war. Life isn't fair, and it doesn't always end with orange blossoms and tulle veils.

Berg's novels sometimes contain romantic elements, but they're in no way romances, and I found the ending satisfying, for all the (articulately worded) reasons cyears gives. This was one of my favourite of her works thus far encountered. - Alex

Casualties - Lynne Reid Banks

Sue McCluskey's marriage is tense - her husband is unhappy about his semi-employed status and seems put out that she's the primary income earner, is always ready to interpret any remark about their sons as criticism toward them and him, and money's tight. So the prospect of a week's holiday away from London, with her old friend Marjoljin (considerately spelled throughout the book the way it's pronounced - Mariolain), her husband and two children in Holland seems like a fantastic way to get a breath and a new perspective. There's only the little matter of them having only seen each other once since the Venetian holiday where they first met, twenty years ago...
Best known for her acclaimed novel The L-Shaped Room, in 1986's Casualties Banks has created a book of deeper resonance, complexity and power. As the story of Sue's marriage to Cal is gently teased out, the darker story of Mariolain and husband Neils's marriage emerges, alongside the shadow cast on them by the War - unimaginably close to the Dutch, for a British observer.
This book reverberates on a number of levels - the pall cast on the present by events of the past, the depressing impact of past generations onto their descendants, the impact of gender identity on sympathy, the potential love has to overcome intellect, the power intellect has over compassion, the price academia has on humanity, and the triumph of survival.
I appreciate that none of this is very helpful when it comes to explaining what the novel is about. In part that's because I doubt I could capture the essence of the book in my own words, but it's also because the way the book unfolds so strongly contributes to the impact of reading that knowing details ahead of time would undermine the effect of the sequence Banks plotted. One's sympathies are swayed thither and yon, and the counterpoint of the British war experience highlights the very different War endured by those on the continent in general, and that of occupied Holland in particular. Cal predicts that the shadow of Vietnam will hang over Britain's head as long, and it is in many ways a shame that this is not the case, even for those countries, like Australia, that did, unlike Britain, participate.
I was inspired to borrow Casualties because I so enjoyed my first adult Lynne Reids Banks experience (I loved her children's book The Fairy Rebel when I was young). I'm interested in the second world war, and that undoubtedly contributed to my experience in reading this book, particularly as it graphically illustrates aspects of both the Dutch and Indonesian experiences, which I was previously woefully ignorant of. However that interest is by no means a prerequisite - Casualties is a human-centred story, layered and compelling. - Alex

A Sensible Life – Mary Wesley

Despised by her father and a burden to her mother, ten-year-old Flora Trevelyan has never known anything else until she comes across a group of middle-class British families holidaying in France for Easter. Starved for warmth and affection, Flora falls hopelessly in love with them all, particularly the boys – Felix, Cosmo and Hubert. Bundled off to boarding school when her self-absorbed, egotistical parents move to India, her memories of that oasis are the only respite from institutionalism, and girls who inexplicably love and miss their families.
Wesley carries us over the next four decades, as we watch Flora – who grows from an awkward child into a self-possessed and beautiful woman – resolve her relationships with the three young men. A less subtle writer would have forcefully emphasised the shabby and distressing treatment of Flora, by both her parents and by the other adults in her life; set in contemporary times Flora may well have become a victim or a sociopath. But Wesley draws the novel in pastel, allowing the impact of events to gently permeate the writing, and her heroine is buoyed by her experiences of a different kind of family - Flora gains strength and resolve that would otherwise have been determinedly squashed by her resentful parents and makes her own way in the world.
As she always does, Wesley manages to imbue the novel with a sensibility of the changing times (the opening scenes take place in 1926), weaving in concerns about socialism, the General Strike, pre-war perceptions of Hitler, and the mores of that particular class. Although Flora is the centre of the novel, the secondary characters are equally well drawn – over the rest of the novel we drop in on the indolent and self-obsessed Denys and Vita Trevelyan in India and see how the British families cross over with one another in the UK. The result is a gentle, satisfying novel that resonates after the book is put down. – Alex