Customer Reviews

A Code for Tomorrow

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It's a shame that John Gobbell hasn't found a wider audience for his reluctant hero Todd Ingram. Gobbell's first Ingram book, The Last Lieutenant was a rousing adventure set in the Phillipines during the fall of Manila and Corregidor.

This book picks up several months later and finds Ingram back at sea in time to participate in the naval action around Guadalcanal. The book then shifts back to the Phillipines.

What separates these stories from a lot of less remarkable WWII fiction is Gobbell's attention to detail and subtle blending of real persons and dead on historical detail into the stories. Two of the background stories going on in this book involve a Russian spy in San Francisco passing American secrets to the Japanese and the horrible state of the US Navy's torpedoes in the early part of the war.

Gobbell also has an great feel for description of all things naval and assumes that his readers have a passing knowledge themselves. He throws out terms like 1MC, TBS, engine repeater, etc., and doesn't fall into the trap of defining in detail every term he uses.

I am anxiously awaiting the next volume in this series, When Danger is Close, Whisper, which is due out in March.

Others have commented on the literary merits of this book, so I'll address its complex intermixing of reality and fiction. The author is pretty accurate on minor (sometimes unnecessary) details, but warps the big picture a lot. A major element of this novel is the outrageously poor performance of US Navy torpedos during 1941-43. In the real WWII, the major impetus for exposing this incredible scandal came from the submarine sailors. The destroyer force seems to have been mostly oblivious to the worthlessness of their major weapons system, even after the unbelievable "battle" against the burning hulk of USS HORNET described in Chapter 39. Yet Gobbell has heroic destroyer sailors uncovering the torpedo scandal. Furthermore, the fundamental cause of the defects was the monopoly on torpedo design and testing held by the Navy's own torpedo factory. Gobbell has invented a private corporation to take the rap instead, for no apparent plot purpose. Loyalty to the old school can be carried too far. Still, the book provides a timely reminder that overwhelming superiority in wealth, science and technology won't win wars unless these factors are converted into viable weapons handled by trained and motivated personnel BEFORE the war starts.

Like Gobbell's first book "The Last Lieutenant," "A Code for Tomorrow" is exciting and fun to read. The story moves at a quick pace and the action never stops. And any book that teaches me more about World War II is, in my opinion, a good book. "A Code for Tomorrow" accomplishes this, as Gobbell places Lt. Todd Ingram at the center of fierce naval battles at Santa Cruz and Cape Esperance.

Though the story is exciting and full of intrigue, I could not help but think that Gobbell based it on a James Bond movie. There are too many quick escapes and bizarre coincidences. For instance, a scene towards the end when Ingram and others are placed on a barge to be killed in a Japense torpedo practice exercise. That sounds more like a James Bond movie than anything have to do with World War II.

Still, I eagerly await Gobbell's next book "When Duty Whispers Low." Gobbell has a gift with his story-telling ability and knowledge of naval history. I very much recommend his books.

Can we that were not there ever feel the force of the War on two fronts. Attacked by the Japs and fighting the Germans across the world. Losing constantly through 1942 in the Pacific but starting to correct as this books shows. It was a time of standing up and doing what was right. Of all the great men we lost we will forever honor and also appreciate all that came home and worked hard to make our country what it is today. It is a great book and I could read it again. UHH RAH.

So now it's several months later, February 1943, and our hero, Navy Lieutenant Todd Ingram, is in San Francisco as the Exec on a new destroyer about to be commissioned. He is still recovering from his Corregidor and Philippine Islands derring-do, and is palling around The City with his old shipmates and a few new characters.
Meanwhile, Army Nurse Lieutenant Helen Durand, who had to be left behind on Mindinao, is into one adventure after another with the very courageous Philippine resistance causing no end of havoc for the occupying and extremely cruel Japanese.
In several sea battles in the Slot in the Solomon Islands, while the U.S. is trying to hold Guadalcanal and vital Henderson Field, big ol' Japanese torpedoes continue to cripple U.S. Navy ships, while U.S. torpedoes wander, sink and go thud.
Todd's life and job as Exec for the new destroyer goes upside down. He meets some big brass, gets the Navy Cross, and is re-assigned as Exec on a destroyer in Noumea. In no time at all he is in the Battle of Cape Esperance, and ends up as acting Skipper when his ship gets hit and the Captain is badly wounded. His ship is ordered to Brisbane for repairs.
U. S. Army Major Otis deWitt, who annoyed Todd for most of the Corregidor-Mindinao-Australia escape, has become a friend (although he is still somewhat insufferable) and is working for General Richard Sutherland on MacArthur's staff. DeWitt is in touch by radio with Helen's guerilla band, and she is ordered home via submarine. The very smitten Todd Ingram knows through the back channel that she's en route to Australia . . . except of course she misses her first pickup and that sub hits a mine and is lost. Despair, then relief, when Todd is ordered to Mindinao by parachute drop to act as beach master for a second rescue try. His arrival is busted, and he gets captured. Can Helen and a small cadre rescue him and escape with Japanese torpedo plans she has stolen?
Keep turning pages, the story is right there.
And so is Volume 3, When Duty Whispers Low.

John Gobbell continues his characters and his premise in this latest book--forming fiction, suspense, espionage, and naval combat based in real, WWII history--and does so with the same flare and catch-and-hold-your-interest writing that can be found in "The Last Lieutenant" (his first book of the series).

As a connoisseur of techno-thrillers, suspense and espionage novels, I think Gobbell ranks up there with the greatest: Clancy, Coonts, Brown, et al. His weaving of actual WWII actions and history with some fictional characterizations is on-target and makes for a fun, can't-put-it-down reading. I highly recommend this--indeed all--of his books to the WWII action buff or general suspense-fiction reader alike.

As hard as it must have been to follow The Last Lieutenant, Gobbell has come through with another riveting story that you will not be able to put down. A minor annoyance is the careless editing: "depravation" instead of "deprivation," some grammatical and spelling errors, etc.