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THE U.S. NAVY'S ON-THE-ROOF GANG

VOLUME ONE: PRELUDE TO WAR

From the On-The-Roof Gang series , Vol. 1

An engaging tale of some little-known Navy cryptology efforts before World War II.

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A lightly fictionalized debut work focuses on pioneering codebreakers in the United States Navy in the years leading up to the Pearl Harbor attack.

Retired radio intelligence officer Zullo combines years of technical expertise with a passion for his subject to craft the first of two volumes about a group of 20th-century Navy cryptologists. Called the On-the-Roof Gang because classes were held on the roof of a Navy building, the effort involved 176 men trained between 1928 and 1941. The radio operators learned techniques of transmission analysis involving Japanese katakana telegraphic code in order to intercept Imperial Japanese navy communications. The key figure in the narrative is Petty Officer Harry Kidder, who in June 1924 is a Morse code expert and Navy radioman in the Philippines. An eager and enthusiastic ham radio amateur, Harry discovers puzzling extra letters in transmissions while pursuing his hobby. Determined to decipher what he has noticed, Harry finds out from a Navy memo that the letters are part of the Japanese katakana alphabet. He then asks a friend’s Japanese wife for assistance. She helps Harry develop a “symbol, sound, and letter chart.” Several months later, Harry, now back in the U.S., meets Lt. Laurance Safford, a radio communications officer in Washington, D.C., assigned to look into Harry’s claims. Alongside the two men is the brilliant Agnes Meyer, working as a civilian in Navy communications, who comes up with the idea to establish a training program, and the On-the-Roof Gang is born. The tale proceeds chronologically, discussing developments in code-breaking techniques during the 1930s as well as military history. Other chapters delve into Harry’s personal life and problems, including an incident in Hawaii that leads to his forced retirement before Safford works to fully reinstate him to the “Research Desk” in 1940.

The intriguing story picks up speed and tension toward the end, as Safford and Navy radio operators search for elusive “Winds Execute” messages that will provide evidence that shows what by then seems inevitable: “War with Japan was imminent and that the Japanese were likely to attack without warning.” While technically historical fiction due to the invented dialogue and scenes, Zullo’s book leans heavily toward nonfiction and will primarily appeal to readers interested in military history, code-breaking, and the war in the Pacific. The narrative sparkles with authenticity and is well organized and clear, enhanced by the judicious use of historical photographs and maps. But the inclusion of each of the 25 training classes tends to slow the dramatic pace. And while the fictional scenes are well crafted, Harry, Safford, and others remain primarily historical figures. Still, history buffs will appreciate the illuminating chronicle, which has been informed by archival sources, first-person accounts, and interviews with veterans. While some details could have been omitted to achieve a tighter story, the author’s firm grasp of events makes for a compelling read. Volume 2 promises to bring readers into the war. Kidder, affectionately known as Pappy, died in 1963 and was inducted into the National Security Agency’s Cryptologic Hall of Honor in 2019.

An engaging tale of some little-known Navy cryptology efforts before World War II. (author’s note, list of abbreviations and acronyms)

Pub Date: Aug. 10, 2020

ISBN: 978-1-73515-270-7

Page Count: 442

Publisher: Self

Review Posted Online: Aug. 7, 2020

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2020

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THE NIGHTINGALE

Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.

Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.

In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.

Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.

Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015

ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3

Page Count: 448

Publisher: St. Martin's

Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014

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THE WOMEN

A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.

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A young woman’s experience as a nurse in Vietnam casts a deep shadow over her life.

When we learn that the farewell party in the opening scene is for Frances “Frankie” McGrath’s older brother—“a golden boy, a wild child who could make the hardest heart soften”—who is leaving to serve in Vietnam in 1966, we feel pretty certain that poor Finley McGrath is marked for death. Still, it’s a surprise when the fateful doorbell rings less than 20 pages later. His death inspires his sister to enlist as an Army nurse, and this turn of events is just the beginning of a roller coaster of a plot that’s impressive and engrossing if at times a bit formulaic. Hannah renders the experiences of the young women who served in Vietnam in all-encompassing detail. The first half of the book, set in gore-drenched hospital wards, mildewed dorm rooms, and boozy officers’ clubs, is an exciting read, tracking the transformation of virginal, uptight Frankie into a crack surgical nurse and woman of the world. Her tensely platonic romance with a married surgeon ends when his broken, unbreathing body is airlifted out by helicopter; she throws her pent-up passion into a wild affair with a soldier who happens to be her dead brother’s best friend. In the second part of the book, after the war, Frankie seems to experience every possible bad break. A drawback of the story is that none of the secondary characters in her life are fully three-dimensional: Her dismissive, chauvinistic father and tight-lipped, pill-popping mother, her fellow nurses, and her various love interests are more plot devices than people. You’ll wish you could have gone to Vegas and placed a bet on the ending—while it’s against all the odds, you’ll see it coming from a mile away.

A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.

Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024

ISBN: 9781250178633

Page Count: 480

Publisher: St. Martin's

Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023

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