I've been an admirer of Reeman's storytelling for many years and have now read a couple of the Blackwood family series. I love the feeling that you're reading what could be a war film script as the accuracy and adventure are equally balanced with another straight forward storyline, in this case a...
I picked this up a couple of years ago for $0.50 from my local library in hard cover large print. Best $0.50 I've ever spent on Reeman. So very different for him. In some ways he expands on a theme from Iron Pirate - with the treatment of (now) post-war Germany. There's also no 'imagination ...
They do: this is the one where, in 1941, the son takes command of a WW1-era destroyer that his father was the keel-plate captain. Plus, the navigator ("Pilot" in Royal Navy lingo) is a former RAF pilot, now no longer cleared to fly. They sail to help defend, then escape, Singapore. I believe t...
British novelists have produced a wide array of war novels from the Napoleonic period to the modern day. This book is set during the middle years of WWII on a battlecruiser -- a ship with the firepower of a battle ship, but with the speed and maneuverability of a cruiser. The faults lie in prote...
Douglas Reeman is a one trick pony, but he performs his trick well, over and over and over. He gets at odd corners of the naval conflict during ww2 and crafts a nice thriller in that space. Here we have one of his darlings, a German merchant raider, running amok in the Indian Ocean. The Austra...
HMS Wagtail is a river gunboat, a ship seemingly at the end of her useful life, lying in a Hong Kong dockyard awaiting her last summons to the breakers' yard. Commander Justin Rolfe is also seemingly at the end of his useful naval life, an embittered man, brooding and angry from a court-martial v...
The Blackwood Saga continues. Captain Jonathan Blackwood, a Royal Marine officer, has his baptism of fire fighting the Turks at Gallipolli. Severely wounded, he is evacuated to Britain, where he recuperates in a specially arranged rest home for wounded servicemen (in peacetime, the building had...
I saw this in a library and couldn't resist the premise. Before WWII the French built a giant submarine with an unusual design: Instead of the usual 5" deck gun, she had a turret with two 8" guns, plus a floatplane in a waterproof hangar. The real sub served the Free French for a while in WWII...
The year was 1943. On the Black Sea, the Russians were fighting a desperate battle to wrest control of its waterways from the Germans. But the Russians' one real weakness was on the water: whatever they did, the Germans did it better, and the daring hit-and-run tactics of the E-boats plagued them...
A fascinating portrayal of mine countermeasures and coastal defence actions during WWII. The story line is somewhat disjointed and the ending is a little too pat, but the setting is worth the read. I found Reeman's writing style in this novel hard to follow (I don't recall this in his other books...
The year: 1943. Now there was to be no more retreat for Britain and her Allies. At last the war was to be carried into enemy territory. And, from captured bases and makeshift harbours in North Africa, The Royal Navy's Special Force was to be the probe and the spearhead of the advance. To this uno...
Travel through Britain's military history with a proud seafaring family, the Blackwoods, and the service tradition in which they make their careers—the Royal Marines. Captain Philip Blackwood of the Royal Marines rejoins his ship, the H.M.S. Audacious, in the summer of 1850. Sent out to Africa to...
The dramatic new novel from the author of Twelve Seconds to Live. Set against the work of a small group of MTBs and motor gunboats (nickname: The Glory Boys) in the supply and defence of Malta, this book focuses on the worst time in 1943, when Malta was almost overwhelmed by German and Italian f...
I loved this book and I didn't want it to end. Publsihed in 1958, this was Reeman's first novel set during the Second World War. As a new author he stuck to what he knew...the war waged by motor torpedo boats in the English Channel and North Sea against German convoys, destroyers, and minesweep...
The Western Ocean 1942.From the bridge of HMS Gladiator, Lieutenant-Commander David Howard's orders were chillingly clear. There could be no mercy.To the men who fought to protect the vital, threatened Merchat Navy convoys in the Western Approaches, the Battle of the Atlantic was a full-scale war...
After four years, the tide of war is turning in North Africa and Europe. The conflict in Southeast Asia, however, has reached new heights of savagery, and Operation Monsun poses a sinister threat to the hope of allied victory. The Special Operations mission off the Burmese coast requires voluntee...
In the forepart of her conning tower Lieutenant Commander Steven Marshall watched the wires being dragged to the bollards along the pier, felt the steel plates beneath his boots vibrating uneasily, as if, like himself, his command was unable to accept that they had arrived safely. In the early mo...
He stood astride the curled body and yawned hugely, his raised fists brushing the low deckhead. With a grunt he stooped and shook Jervis’s shoulder. ‘C’mon then! Don’t make a bloody meal of it!’ Jervis groaned and sat up blinking, his red-rimmed eyes staring round at first with shocked unfamiliar...
The officers’ club had seen better days, he thought, and even the large paintings of sea battles long past could not disguise the shabbiness, the tiredness of war. In one room he had seen great cracks down the wall, evidence of one of the air raids which Plymouth had endured. &n...
Across the centre of the Inlet, moving like swamp gas above the swift current, a low haze drifted seaward, momentarily blotting out the shape of the Porcupine’s hull but leaving her funnel and masts disembodied against the far shore. Trewin lifted himself to his feet and peered at his watch. He h...