Ask Americans what the best fighter planes of World War Two were, and they will probably name the Japanese Zero, the German 109, and the British Spitfire. The Hurricane is just some other Brit plane. PIECE OF CAKE is one of my favorite WWII novels. It is about a year in the life of a British H...
This was a disappointment! Mr Robinson seems to have a low opinion of RAF officers. I don't think this story is a true depiction of RAF types of that era. I know some were like this and they were not all fair haired blue eyed boys doing the right thing and having a wizard prang. However, having s...
Derek Robinson is a long time favourite of mine and one of my immediate choices when asked for book recommendations. Goshawk Squadron is a short, raw, 1971 novel about a Royal Flying Corps squadron flying in France towards the end of World War One. This was my second read, having originally read ...
All is not quiet on the Western Front in 1917, and the men of Hornet Squadron feel as if the war will last for decades. For Woolley and his fellow pilots, only two things can take their mind off combat's tedious brutality: the nurses and a potent brew called "Hornet's Sting." But, as the big summ...
They found a real estate agency and the agency quickly found what they wanted. It was a low-slung five-bedroom ranch-style house nailed to the side of a hill above Cliff Boulevard and offering sprawling views of two cities—El Paso on this side of the Rio Grande, Juárez on the Mexican side—plus th...
It read: 5.30 a.m. Gone to bed. Please wake me at 10.30. Coffee in big blue and white jar. Beware hot water very hot.Julie, wearing a red towelling robe she had found hanging behind the door, padded around the apartment. It was spacious: four rooms, kitchen and bathroom. One room was shut. Presum...
Griffin took with him the adjutant, Count Borodin and Hackett. In the other carriage went Oliphant, Wragge and a couple of bomber pilots, Tommy Hopton and Douglas Gunning. Their plennys had worked hard. Buttons were bright, creases were sharp. The carriages crossed the aerodrome and turned south....
The stack of manuscript stood a foot high. 1953 was too soon to seek publication. Timing was everything in life, and when the moment came, Wagner would be ready. Ready to demonstrate that the Third Reich had not been defeated in 1945. The Wehrmacht had run out of war materials—bullets, tanks, fue...
Ten or twelve men were sitting round a fire on a distant hillside. They all stood up when the vehicles went by. Lampard had put his captured Mercedes truck at the front and Malplacket’s Fiat station-wagon at the tail, and he hoped the dust would obscure what was in between. He waved, and a couple...
Domenik asked. “Oh … judging by the volume of blood, about a day and a half … I don’t know. Two or three minutes, probably.” “And is there any history of this sort of thing in your family?” “Not that I know of.” Christian’s fingertips were sending Morse on the armrest. “Don’t tell me if you don’t...
It was a huge dam, stuffed with thunder, and in its rush to escape, the thunder rolled over itself and made a double thunder, and then the double thunder exploded with a roar, and the roar swelled until the air was swamped with noise. Fifteen miles away, lying on O’Neill’s bed, Paxton thought the...