Customer Reviews

Checkfire!

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This book tells the fictional story of the USS Truxton, an obsolete 4-stack destroyer converted into an amphibious transport, as it sees action in the Pacific after Pearl Harbor.

Checkfire! is a step down from the author's exceptional "South to Java", but a huge step up from "Normandy". Most of the characters are well fleshed out and interesting. The action, while a bit weak, is realistic. And, most of the historical references that I'm familiar with are correct. There are some odd errors -- one character, while passing a naval airfield, remarks on the smell of jet exhaust, which couldn't have happened in 1942. Overall, it's a good read and can be hard to set down at times.

One note on the publisher, Nautical & Aviation Publishing Company of America. I've read thousands of books over the years, and have never -- never -- come across a book so riddled with typos and typesetting errors. It looks like they simply took a rough Word copy of the manuscript and published it as-is, with no proofreading or editing. This inexcusably shoddy work by the publisher definitely detracts from the reading experience, through no fault of the author. Even running a simple spell checker would have produced a far cleaner and more professional result.