The Fighting Agents (1987)

This deserves three and a half stars. It was, plotwise, a vast improvement over the first couple books. As one would expect, there is espionage and things don't always go smoothly, which makes for a much more interesting read. Another pleasant break from schoolwork. Sooner or later I'll get around to tracking down book 5 and continue on. ( )

I like these better than the "honor" series because there is at least some action in these. Sorta makes me was to drop Para and join SOE. ( )

Set laregly in the Phillippine Islands in 1943, this is one of the best military thrillers I've read. Griffin's grasp of WWII history seems to me, admittedly not a professional historian, particularly sharp--he seems to be able to stitch a story to every real event that happened anywhere in the world during his story's extent.

As is usual with Griffin's books, several storylines that don't seem related are made into a tight braid by the end of the book, and characters whose purpose was obscure are suddenly revealed to be central to the *actual* story that these perspectives unite to tell. What in tarnation could a loser in Cairo recruited by the CIA's precursor and a crack agent in Budapest, whose job is to prevent Nazi interrogators from torturing information out of prisoners he knows even if it means killing them himself, have to do with a -- well, unconventional, let's say -- guerrilla commander in the Phillippines?

Telling would be spoilering. Read it and find out. Griffin, a talented writer of some eighty summers (b. 1929), is still writing! Give his stuff a try. Even the military-fiction-phobic could find a thriller or two to enjoy. ( )

Great book ( )