A captivating war novel that immerses readers in the craft of killing and its somber results.
A Royal Air Force pilot battles the Luftwaffe during World War II in Forsyth’s historical novel.
This third installment of the adventures of Allan Chadwick follows the RAF squadron leader into war, which will challenge his skills as a pilot and position him as a catalyst in the innovation of aviation technology. He’s soon commanding a front-line squadron of Spitfire fighter planes in the Battle of Britain and gets shot down several times—once parachuting into the English Channel—in the course of ferocious dogfights with Germany’s fearsome Messerschmitt 109s. Chadwick then goes to work in the obscure but vital area of electronic navigation aids intended to improve the woeful accuracy of British bomber aircraft. He’s in the thick of designing equipment that uses radio beams to guide warplanes precisely to their targets and then testing it on bombing runs over German-occupied Europe. On one raid he gets shot down over France and embarks on a picaresque journey in which he beds a farmer’s two daughters, falls in with the Resistance, and, finally, hijacks a Messerschmitt 110 back to Britain. Put in charge of a precision-bombing unit, he stages a raid on Berlin that interrupts a speech by Luftwaffe chief Hermann Goering, who vows to take personal vengeance for the humiliation. The author, a former RAF pilot, paints a vivid panorama of the air war, including the daily grind of fighter combat that left veterans haggard and twitchy with stress; the hours-long, freezing-cold bombing runs punctuated by storms of anti-aircraft fire; the hair-raising crash landings; and the numbing drumbeat of deaths. His writing mixes fascinating deep dives into the gadgetry and tactics of aerial combat with gripping action scenes conveyed in brutally evocative prose (“Ramsey was prostrate besides his seat, his body lacerated by dozens of shrapnel fragments. His head sagged, and Chadwick could see he was practically decapitated”). Chadwick is an appealing hero—stoic and resourceful, but quietly marked by the horrors unfolding around him.
A captivating war novel that immerses readers in the craft of killing and its somber results.Pub Date: May 1, 2023
ISBN: 9798985322071
Page Count: 388
Publisher: Yacht Fiona
Review Posted Online: April 24, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
As usual, Evanovich handles the funny stuff better (much better) than the mystery stuff.
Stephanie Plum’s 31st adventure shows that Trenton’s preeminent fugitive-apprehension agent still has plenty of tricks up her sleeve, and needs every one of them.
The current caseload for Stephanie and Lula—the ex-prostitute file clerk at her cousin Vincent Plum’s bail bonds company, who serves as her unflappable sidekick—begins with two “failures to appear.” Eugene Fleck is suspected of being Robin Hoodie, who robs from the rich and, yes, distributes the proceeds to the poor. Racketeer Bruno Jug, who’s missed his court date on charges of tax evasion, is also suspected of drugging and raping a 14-year-old. But neither of these fugitives can hold a candle to Zoran Djordjevic, aka Fang, a self-proclaimed vampire wanted in connection with the gruesome fate of his late wife and three other missing women. As usual, Stephanie’s personal life is just as helter-skelter as her professional life as a bounty hunter. She’s managed to get herself engaged both to Det. Joe Morelli, of the Trenton PD, and Ranger, a former Special Forces agent who runs a private security firm; she thinks she may be pregnant; and she’s willing to marry the father, whichever of her fiances that turns out to be. On top of it all, her nothingburger schoolmate Herbert Slovinski suddenly pops up at one of the funerals she ferries her Grandma Mazur to, hitting on her relentlessly and gilding his importunities by cleaning and painting her shabby apartment and laying new carpet. Luckily, Lula’s on hand to offer cupcakes that stave off the worst disasters, and whenever this hodgepodge threatens to slow down, another FTA appears, or fails to appear.
As usual, Evanovich handles the funny stuff better (much better) than the mystery stuff.Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2024
ISBN: 9781668003138
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2024
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.
Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.
A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice (The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-3888-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
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