ALL THE BRAVE FELLOWS by James L. Nelson

Another (the 5th) entry in Nelson's terrific REVOLUTION AT SEA series. This one finds Isaac Biddlecomb and his wife and infant child stranded along with his crew and a company of Colonial Marines on the shores of South Jersey. They must make their way to the Port of Philadelphia to pick up The Falmouth, a brand new frigate being outfitted as Isaac's new command.

 

One thing stands in their way, the British army under Lord Howe now occupies Philadelphia. It's a duel race against time as the ship's master must rig and outfit the new frigate with only a crew of deserters from the Battle of Brandywine led by a mysterious and abrasive Irishman. At the same time Issac must slip by the British fleet in the Delaware River and make his way through the Yankee blockade all while under the threat of his greatest enemy.

 

Sweeping, big, larger than life entertainment with an exciting recounting of Washington's disastrous rout at Brandywine. This part was especially interesting to me as I live near that battlefield and have walked it many times.

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DOG COMPANY SIX by Edward Howard Simmons

Written by a Korean War vet who was on the spot, this is an engrossing fictional account of how the United States part in the Korean Conflict went from the exhilaration of victory to disaster. We follow Dog Company and its new commander from the Inchon landing to the Chosin Reservoir and the "strategic withdraw" that inspired the famous Marine quote, "Retreat, hell! WE just advanced in another direction."

 

The descriptions of night actions against the Chinese army and the defense of a forward position against impossible odds are harrowing. The book maintains a feel that few modern military fiction books can match; the point of view of the professional soldier. There's no over-sentimentality here and no forced tugging of the heeartstrings that I found in the vastly inferior MARINES OF AUTUMN that was a bestseller last year.

 

This one succeeds on all levels. It very much reminded me of the Korean War aviation classic THE HUNTERS by James Salter. And that ain't bad company.

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TO GLORY WE STEER by Alexander Kent
Book 5 of the Bolitho Saga.

I started reading this series last year and find myself jumping back into it at every opportunity. The series follows Richard Bolitho from midshipman in the British Navy at the time of the American Revolution through his rise in the ranks. This entry finds him in command of his own ship and attached to the Admiralty out of Antigua in the Caribbean.

 

While I enjoyed every book so far this one rose above the usual period adventure fiction. Kent excels at this genre but with this book he surpasses himself. The action is breathtaking. The emotional and spiritual impact of war on the characters is palpable. He captures the mix of fear and exultation of war. The climactic fleet action is horrifying in its fury. If you enjoy any kind of historical fiction this series is worth a try. I've read up to Book Seven and while each is well-paced and exciting this one is a sheer treasure.

 

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HARLEQUIN by Bernard Cornwell

If you've read Cornwell's Sharpe or Starbuck series you know he's a great storyteller. Here he begins a new series following the adventures of a young English archer during the early part of the Hundred Years War when English and Welch longbowman and men-at-arms savaged the French countryside for most of a century.

 

The lead character is Thomas of Hookton and he enters the service of his king after his village is sacked by French marauders. His past is a mystery to him and the mystery deepens as he is assigned an impossible quest to return the Lancer of St George to England.

 

This is a big fat slice of the Middle Ages and the period is shown in unforgiving detail. It's one of those "boy, I'm glad I wasn't alive then" reads. The action is brutal and so are the attitudes. No attempt to justify the time period's prejudices or injustices from our vantage point. And that's what separates great historical novels from junk.

 

The pacing is compulsive and the characters well drawn. The depiction of the epic Battle of Crecy at the end is a stunner. We are kept aware of the movement of the entire battle (the first of MANY bloody defeats the French would suffer) without taking anything away from the suspense.

 

I'm not sure if this one is available here. I picked it up off of amazon.uk.

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LA CONFIDENTIAL by James Ellroy

I re-read this one recently and was more impressed than I was the first time. No one writes in this guy's style. His prose is beyond spare, way past terse. It reads like he's in a fever to get it down and can't slow down for descriptive phrasing or literary niceties. The book reads like a sleigh ride down Everest as a result.

But that doesn't mean the book isn't deep or evocative. Ellroy chooses his words like diamonds and each one resonates.

If you've seen the (excellent) movie you've only scratched the surface of this novel. There's so much more here. Three detectives working in LA in the early '50s are set on a collision course following a mass murder in the Nite Owl restaurant. This epic novel follows the lives of these three through a dense and vile conspiracy of graft, pornography and mob violence.

Any Ellroy is bracing stuff. This is hailed as his classic. Though my favorite is AMERICAN TABLOID.

If you want to discover this great hardboiled crime writer I'd suggest starting with THE BLACK DAHLIA and moving through his entire canon.

 

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PAGAN BABIES by Elmore Leonard

The kind of sharp dialogue and unusual characters you expect from this master. For me this is one of his minor works. His characters seem to always have an informed opinion about old movies that I doubt is shared by most criminal lowlifes. After a very promising start the novel treads some familiar (in a few cases too familiar) territory with hoods, a suspicion arousing Catholic priest and a spectacularly unfunny stand up comedienne. I think she was meant to be funny but you couldn't tell from the material. This is Leonard on cruise control and, while it was a fun read, it's too light by half. The last novel from him that disappointed me was OUT OF SIGHT but that made for a great movie. Maybe this one can be rescued the same way. There are some great scense here.

 

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THE LAST DANCE An 87th Precinct Novel by Ed McBain

Number 50 in this series. The grand daddy of all police procedural mysteries. Nothing even comes close.

This one begins with the detectives of the 87th working what looks like a routine suicide. An apparentand shut case that proves to have a twist or two.

McBain, as always, is in the driver's seat and the results are, as always. fast paced, thought provoking and sometimes darkly humorous. These characters are so real and familiar to me after years of reading these books that it's like revisiting old friends. These are nothing less than models for how to make characters grow over time in an ongoing story. Pick up any of these and you'll be hooked.

 

 

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THE HOOK by Donald E. Westlake.

A dean of American crime fiction at his best. If there were any jutsice in the world this guy would be atop all the bestseller lists all the time. He's often referred to as a "writer's writer" with more magic in his bag of tricks than anyone else out there. Crime noir, adventure, private eye, caper comedy even technothrillers are expertly crafted in this guy's hands.

He's the author (as Richard Stark) of the remarkable Parker series of crime novels. The first of these was the source for POINT BLANK and PAYBACK. Under his own name he's written the beloved Dortmunder novels. The most famous of which was THE HOT ROCK. He's also written the screenplays for THE STEPFATHER and THE GRIFTERS.

This is Westlake's best novel since KAHAWA. He returns to the psychogical thriller as a genre. He wrote a few terrific ones early in his career. Last year's THE AX was a prime example. The setting for this one is a world he's familiar with; fiction authors. To give away even a hint of the plot would ruin this compulsive page turner. But the suspense is as deep as the psychosis here and the ending is unexpected and devastating. If this is your first Westlake I envy you. Consistantly my favorite writer.

 

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THE REQUIEM SHARK By Nicholas Griffin

 

The best novel I've read since ALL THE PRETTY HORSES.
This is a story of pirates in the early part of the 18th Century that Dumas or Defoe would have been proud to write. The author based much of the language he uses on published journals printed at the time of the pirates. But the prose is far from dry. This book sings and the author uses words with a mastery that's breathtaking.
And the story is a wonder too. It loosely follows the career of Black Bart Roberts, a buccaneer who terrorized the Caribbean and the African Gold Coast. It's told through the eyes of the ship's fiddler who's an educated young man who's drafted to write down the Captain's exploits. The plot of an epic scale but never bloated or overblown. The life of a pirate in the waning days of the Age of Piracy is portrayed accurately as can be and will run counter to the notions of most readers who only know pirates from Errol Flynn movies. Nothing wrong with that. No one likes a swashbuckler more than I do. But no swashes are buckled here. There's no glory or redemption for this villainous crew.

The action is bloody and horrifying and violent in the extreme. No attempt is made to justify it or explain it away from a 20th Century perspective. These were hard men in a brutal world.

I can't recommend this book highly enough. If you're sick of the drivel that passes for most fiction these days then pick this one up. It'll restore your faith in popular literature.

 

 

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BE COOL By Elmore Leonard

 

Just so you don't think ALL I read is nautical fiction I thought I'd review this.
Elmore Leonard is one of those writers who makes it look easy. For my tastes, he sometimes makes it look a little TOO easy and his story meanders into fluff. OUT OF SIGHT comes to mind. One of the rare times the movie was far better than the book.

But he's on the money here in a second novel about Chili Palmer the mob collector turned movie producer from GET SHORTY. This time Chili's in the music business and discovers there's just as many phonies and cretins there as in the film industry. He also runs into some old friends from his criminal days. And that's where the action starts.

The dialogue is tight and terse and funny. The action moves fast and the twists come often. I place this on the second tier of Leonard's work. But even second tier Leonard beats the snot out of most crime writers at their best.

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THE BATTLE by Patrick Rambaud.
Translated from the French this novel concerns the battle of Essling in Austria. It's Napoleon's first defeat in Europe in 1809. The novel concerns only the three days of the battle and is populated by real an imaginary characters which are expertly sketched in and then enfused with three dimensional personalities. Rambaud maintains clarity throughout keeping the ebb and flow of the battle consistantly understandable. No mean feat that. The action is instense and often repulsive. But such is le guerre, right? It's very French in tone but that's a good thing. This is not the usual guys in pretty uniforms firing muskets at one another. This book gets ugly and messy. The entire theme is that this battle heralded the dawn of a new kind of warfare. It's worth picking up.

 

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THE TURNCOAT'S DRUM by Nicholas Carter.

I had to order this one from amazon uk. Hopefully they'll print this series in the US. This is the first of a series of books about the English Civil War, y'know, Cavaliers and Roundheads and Cromwell and that crowd.
The book is a bit too heavy on the potboiler side for my taste but it's a first novel for its author so I'll that slide. When the action heats up its a fascinating and convicing portrayal of war at the tail end of the Renaissance. Lots of info I was unaware of in this book. I'm not really that well versed on this period of English history. One thing the book hammers home is why so darned many of our ancestors got the heck out of England and came to the New World. The Thirty Years War (of which the English Civil War was a kind of sideshow) was one dark chapter in European history. I'm anxious to read the next in the series, THE STORMING PARTY, 'cause I think this guy's just getting started.

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THE GUARDSHIP by James L.Nelson.

Another tale of adventure on the high seas (well, actually the coast of Virginia at the beginning of the 18th Century). The title refers to the British ship of the line whose job it was to patrol the Chesapeake Bay and enforce the laws of the Burgesses and the Governor. A man with a shadowy past is enlisted the captain the Guardship. His past catches up with him in the best pirate story I've read since CAPTAIN BLOOD. Plenty of action that's as inventive and rousing as Nelson's earlier books. The coolest thing for me is that much of the story is set around Williamsburg. I've visited this place a half dozen times and explored all of it. It was great to read a historical novel and know all the street names and be able to picture the buildings and settings. This is the first in a series and I hope it's a long one.

 

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WHITE MAN'S GRAVE by Richard Dooling.

This is satire at its sharpest. The son of a shark-like bankruptcy lawyer disappears in Sierra Leone. The lawyer does all he can from the United States to try and find him. His gifts of money to the desperately poor village his Peace Corps volunteer kid vanished from only serve to make the villagers even more miserable. The son's best friend goes to find his pal and delves deep into the mysticism and weirdness of this god awful third world country. Well, you know what the road to Hell is paved with. A great parody of westerners looking to explore cultures foreign to their own. And there's some seriously freaky scenes with a character called the Witchfinder. Dooling is a true free thinker and his take on multi-culturalism and western presumption is eyeng.

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LORDS OF THE OCEAN by James L. Nelson.

I've never been on a sailing ship in my life and Patrick O'Brien's books of sea adventures leave me dry. But this guy writes a hell of a nautical adventure. There's more than a touch of Rafael Sabatini here in this book which is the fourth in a series about the American Revolution at sea. The guy can write thrilling and convincing action. And though I don't know a studding sail from a yardarm the guy writes the nautical terms in a way that I get the feel of what he's after and the action never gets muddy. Great rousing stuff.

 

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NIGHT DOGS by Kent Anderson

This guy wrote SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL, one of the best novels of the Vietnam War I've ever read. Here he turns his attention to a big city cop working a tough beat in the 1970's. Anderson captures the mood and malaise of the period perfectly in a tough and unrelenting book that might just haunt you long after you've put it down. This story walks the walk in an uncompromising glimpse of the inner city. I highly recommend both this and his previous book.

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THE GUN SELLER by Hugh Laurie

Hugh Laurie is probably known to you as a character actor. He was the smarter of the two dumb thugs working for Cruella DeVille in the live action 101 DALMATIONS. He plays the Dad in the upcoming STUART LITTLE. Turns out he's a darn fine crime fiction writer. THE GUN SELLER is a fast paced spy/crime/action novel that moves seamlessly from humor to dread and back again. It's light when it needs to be and gets deadly serious when it's called for. Mr Laurie handles action well and the plot twist at the end is a classic of poetic justice. This one would be a great screen vehicle for someone like Mel Gibson or another guy who can handle a wiseass remark as well as he can a handgun. Lots of fun.

 

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LITTLE GREEN MEN by Christopher Buckley
A master satirist turns his eye to government conspiracies and UFO hysteria. A secret federal task force that works to keep the public's interest in extraterrestrials kidnaps a high profile TV personality to help them spread the word. The poor sap believes he's been abducted by aliens and leads a national movement to uncover "The Truth." Sharp edged and truly funny.

THE BIG BLOWDOWN by George Pelacanos
A hardboiled crime epic spanning decades. But this is no bloated potboiler. This guy's prose is lean and sharp and his evocation of the forties and fifties is believable. Tough stuff without the macho posturing. These are real men. They fight and bleed and know fear. Pelacanos is amazing. The story moves at a rocket pace and the characters come to life in just a few phrases.

BACKFLASH by Richard Stark
The last in the series of crime novels featuring Parker a remorseless thief. These are CRIME novels about professional criminals at work. And the heists they pull aren't ridiculous high tech nonsense. They're brutal and real. Like the others in the series this one starts out loaded with tension and then just keeps ratcheting it up notch after notch. Parker and his string are taking on a riverboat gambling ship. The take is big but the risks are bigger. And anyone who gets in Parker's way is a deadman. I love these stories. Everyone is a gem. Mel Gibson played Parker (called Porter for some reason) in the recent move PAYBACK. The movie's not bad but barely scratches the surface of Parker's world of nihilism and shifting loyalty.

BRAIN STORM by Richard Dooling
This book moves from laugh-out-loud funny to thought-provoking in a blink of an eye. It's about an army sergeant accused of a "hate crime" and the poor sucker who's picked to defend him. But this is no John Grisham baloney. Dooling mixes the legal and medical professions into a challenging novel that examines politics, morality, race, sex and science at the end of the 20th Century. This one took two readings to soak it all in and it was worth it. And it is a scream. But it's also a brilliant piece of social satire refreshingly free of the tired old arguments about bigotry in America.

A SHRED OF HONOUR by Tom Connery.
This one is historical action that's accurate and bloody. Markham is a soldier in the British Army in the 18th Century. He's hated by his superiors because he's the illegitimate son of an English General and he's Irish. He's hated by his men simply because he's Irish. But leads them into one savage battle after another opposing the Republican French besieging the coastal city of Toulon. The action is furious and well told. George Markham is a fascinating fictional creation filled with contradictions and flaws. Theng action sequence in the book is amazing as we are dropped into the midst of a naval battle and filled in on the past of the main character and all the tensions in his life in flawless prose. The climax of this initial scene is both horrifying and darkly hilarious. This book is the first in a series. If you like this kind of rousing stuff then this book has to be in your library. I tore through it like wildfire.

Chuck