To Catch A Spy

An Otto Penzler Book





















Written by Stuart M. Kaminsky

Copyright © 2002 by Stuart M. Kaminsky



In Stuart M. Kaminsky's To Catch A Spy,  private investigator to the movie stars Toby Peters takes on a case for actor Cary Grant which involves Nazi sympathizers secretly operating in Hollywood.

After the exciting opening scenes with Toby's client Grant - of which the scenes reminded me of the final scenes from the movie North By NorthWest - I was waiting for the scenes that lead up to that dramatic point of the story at the beginning of the book, since after the opening scenes the book goes back to how Toby got started on this case. Cary Grant is being blackmailed and goes and asks Toby to meet his blackmailer at a park - where the person Toby is supposed to meet gets shot. Now Toby must find the person mentioned in the dying man's words. Soon Toby's friends, inept dentist Shelly Minck, wrestler/poet Jerry Butler, and Swiss little person Gunther Wherthman discover a Nazi link to a University.

Pancho
All people smile in the same language.

WE WERE SOLDIERS ONCE... AND YOUNG

HARPERTOURCH
An Imprint of  HarperCollinsPublishers

Written by Lt. Gen. Harold G. Moore (Ret.) and Joseph L. Galloway

Copyright © 1992 by Lt. General H.G. Moore and Joseph L. Galloway



In November of 1965, 450 men of the 1st Battalion, 7th Calvary fought at the Ia Drang Valley in Vietnam against 2000 North Vietnamese soldiers in the first major large-unit American engagements of the Vietnam War.

The basis for the movie We Were Soldiers, starring Mel Gibson, this non-fiction book is told from eyewitness accounts by the men - both American and Vietnamese - who fought in that war. Written by the commander of the battalion Lt. Gen. Harold G. Moore (Ret.,) and the reporter on the ground, journalist Joseph L. Galloway, this book is basically about two battles - as a sister battalion of the 1st Battalion was also cut to pieces a few days later in the Ia Drang Valley in the first conventional battles of the Vietnam War with heavy casualties on both sides.

What got to me the most about reading the book was reading the list of names of the people who gave their lives for their country in the beginning of the book - especially when I read the names of the people who were local to me. The experiences of the 'Lost Platoon' were sad for me as I was thinking, "what if that was me?" This battle was also basically the first use of the 1st Calvary Division (Airmobile) - the first use of helicopters as a major aerial combat force in Vietnam. While reading about the helicopters, I kept on thinking about the book Chickenhawk by Robert Mason and of Mason's experiences of being a Huey helicopter pilot. One thing I learned in the book We Were Soldiers Once... and Young, that I did not know about the Vietnam War era, was that in the beginning of the war the Army was not set up to do casualty notification - so in Columbus, Georgia, Western Union used taxi-cab drivers to deliver the casualty telegrams to the soldiers relatives homes. The people in Columbus dreaded seeing the taxi-cabs driving around as a result. I know I would have dreaded seeing them as well. The book never really got into how the cab drivers felt, except for one cab driver getting drunk, but I can imagine that it must have been heart-breaking and tearing the cab drivers up inside as the drivers went out and performed this sad duty that was not originally in their job description.

Pancho
All people smile in the same language.

STORMBREAKER

speak
An Imprint of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

Written by Anthony Horowitz

Copyright © 2000 by Anthony Horowitz, All rights reserved




In Stormbreaker, written by Anthony Horowitz, the British banker uncle of teenager Alex Rider is killed. Alex soon discovers that his uncle was not just killed in a car accident - but was murdered. His uncle's boss, Alan Blunt, then has Alex brought into "The Firm" and recruits teenaged Alex for something completely unexpected - as being an agent for Britain's Secret Intelligence Service - MI6.

The first of the young adult Alex Rider series, Alex, with his talent as a martial artist, is blackmailed by Blunt into now completing the counter terrorism mission Alex's secret agent uncle was on - finding out why a philanthropist, who is distributing new computers to schools across the country, had his uncle killed.

Of course, Alex was completely in the dark about his uncle's true occupation as an agent and was totally in shock about all of this. Alan Blunt, as the Chief of MI6 Secret Intelligence Service, is ruthless in that he blackmails teenager Alex and Alex's skills as a martial artist into being an agent for MI6, when Alex really is just a kid. Blunt really does not care about Alex as he sees and only uses Alex as a tool to be used for Her Majesty's Government's national security and economic well-being. Making Alex as a tool does not necessariliy gaurentee him to be a good intelligence officer - although he is - but Blunt does not seem to care.  Blunt also does not seem to be aware of, or care of, the political fallout to him and the agency if the news of Blunt using a kid as an agent for MI6 ever gets out to the public. You want Alex to be so good at his mission and confront the man who had killed his uncle - so that at the end of all this adventure, Alex can be justified in telling Blunt off and to go shove it so that Alex can go home and live out his life in peace.

Pancho
All people smile in the same language.

TEMPLE

St. Martin's Paperbacks


Written by Matthew Reilly


Copyright © 1999 by Matthew Reilly
Excerpt from Area 7 copyright 2002 by Matthew Reilly



In Matthew Reilly's Temple, American university linguist Professor William Race is recruited by the U.S. Army and brought to the jungles of Peru to translate a centuries-old manuscript that will lead to an Incan idol made from a meteorite  - whose extra-terrestrial properties are powerful enough to build a doomsday bomb.

With several competing military factions searching for the idol, including the U.S. Navy, a lot of action happens in this book when the doomsday bomb program is stolen from DARPA, the military's research facility. Race is in dire straights as all of the factions aggressively go after his academic talents. The book changes point of view several times as Race translates the manuscript, with the manuscript translation done in first person. When reading from the manuscript, the point of view of the manuscript/book then is from a monk who had traveled to the land of the Incan Empire and then the manuscript talks of the monk's escape from the Spanish conquistadors as well as his quest with the idol.

The fact that there are legendary large mutant-like pumas guarding the idol may throw some people off, but the pumas creates a natural peril in this story - besides the military factions and the native tribe as Race's antagonists - which I liked.

The excerpt for Matthew Reilly's Area 7, a Shane Schofield novel, shows the assassination of a senator and the man responsible for his assination, thus setting things up for what the book really is about - controlling the President of the United States.

Pancho
All people smile in the same language.

G.I. JOE - ABOVE & BEYOND

A Del Rey Mass Market Original

Written by Max Allan Collins

Copyright © 2009 by Hasbro Inc.
Copyright © 2009 Paramount Pictures

All Rights Reserved.



In the prequel to the movie G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, the book Above & Beyond deals with the G.I. Joe team - an elite United Nations Special Operations Force - on a parallel mission with Lieutenant Duke Hauser's elite American covert insertion team, in secret support for Hauser's team as both teams search for advanced weapons that are being sold by weapons dealers.

In this book, you get to know a little bit more about the individual Joes, including Cover Girl - who did not last very long in the movie. I actually grew to like Cover Girl in the book and felt rather sad knowing her ultimate fate in the movie G.I. JOE: The Rise of the Cobra. There are two missions, the first mission dealing with the sophisticated weapons that the weapons dealers are dealing with. The final mission is the one that is mentioned in the movie and deals with super soldiers - along with Duke's doctor brother-in-law. This second final mission leads into the movie and the terrorist organization that they will deal with. I felt the pain of Duke, whose pain was a consequence of that last mission. This prequel book is a little more believable to me than what the movie had portrayed.

Pancho
All people smile in the same language.

UP COUNTRY

WARNER BOOKS EDITION

Written by Nelson DeMille

Copyright © 2002 by Nelson DeMille

Cover design by Jackie Merri Meyer
Cover illustration by Stanislaw Fernandez
Hand lettering by Tony Russo



In Up Country, a sequel to Nelson DeMille's The General's Daughter, Paul Brenner, who resigned from the U.S. Army's Criminal Investigation Division, is called back into service in Washington D.C. by his former commanding officer - who wants Brenner to conduct an investigation into a homicide that occurred 30 years ago during the Vietnam War. Vietnam veteran Brenner reluctantly returns to Vietnam in the middle of the Tet new year celebration - and meets ex patriot Susan Weber, a possible CIA agent. Brenner and Susan then journey through Vietnam searching for the witness to this 30 year-old mystery.

While there is the story of the homicide investigation, most of the book seems like an autobiography of Demille's experience as a U.S. Army lieutenant during the Vietnam War. Brenner revisits his former battle sites and bases in the country as the country celebrates the week-long Tet celebration. Brenner tells Susan of his experiences at these sites to her, the horror of the fighting of the U.S. troops and the Viet Cong, as Brenner searches for a witness who used to be an enemy. You see the contrast of Brenner's and the Americans western influence on Vietnam as a new market, despite the holiday frame of mind of Tet. You also see the conservative Asian Vietnamese culture and the politics as evidenced by the repeated investigated interviews by the Vietnamese cop Colonel Mang against Brenner - who resents the American involvement that resulted from the Cold War military conflict, so Brenner suffers from Mang's resentment. Even if the country prospers from the western tourism of Vietnam, Mang is quite resentful. While the ending of the book was not exactly satisfying to me, the ending does reflect the political attitude of the end of the conflict back in 1975.

Brenner's relationship with Susan is interesting, because you are never really sure if Susan is really interested in Brenner as a lover - or if she is ready to betray him and kill Brenner as part of Susan being a CIA operative. Certainly Brenner is ambivalent to Susan as he is always wondering about Susan's feelings, as well as wondering about his relationship with his girlfriend who is still back in the States.

Paramount Pictures had bought the rights to Up Country with John Travolta reprising his role as Paul Brenner. We will see if the movie will go into production and come out.

Pancho
All people smile in the same language.

DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER

Written by Ian Fleming

Copyright © 1956 by Glidrose Productions Ltd.

Paperback
Publisher: Berkley (May, 1982)
Language: English

ISBN-0-425-05364-4



In Diamonds are Forever, part of the James Bond series by Ian Fleming, Britain' secret service agent Bond is sent to America to search for diamond smugglers in order to defend the national security and economic well-being of the United Kingdom. Bond once again teams up with his American agent friend and counterpart Felix Leiter and meets the hot, mysterious Miss Tiffany Case as he uses her to go up against the mob.

As Bond tries to infiltrate the mob, it is just a little too unbelievable to me that a stranger from England is able to get into the mob that easily. Granted there was some initial suspicion from the mob, but there was not enough suspicion for me to totally believe that he could get accepted with them even at a low level. It would seem criminals would be very cliquish and paranoid against strangers. There is a little action involved in the book, but not as action-packed as compared to today's media like the James Bond movies. Considering the title Diamonds are Forever, diamonds are hardly mentioned in the book - even if diamonds was the reason Bond was on the case. When you consider the high value of diamonds as a highly traded precious stone commodity, this is a most noticeable lack of use in the book - as diamonds have been the driving violent force behind using slave and child labor, especially in Africa, to fund the blood diamonds by dictators and revolutionary entities. I do not recall any mention of these issues being touched on in the book. It would have been interesting to see if the cliquish criminals had attatched some of the supposed supernatural lore of diamonds to their diamonds when they were dealing with them.

Pancho
All people smile in the same language.