Customer Reviews

Incident In Mona Passage: A Novel Of The Next War Beneath The Sea

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I recommend this book for all lovers of submarine techno thrillers. It is a white knuckle ride through the world of top secret biological weapons research, coupled with the technical submarine ops of the U.S.Navy. The ending is quite unexpected making the story line that much more entertaining, albeit sad. A very good novel written by a very capable author.

If you are looking for an exciting navy story, probably better pass this one up. The naval interest and action are outweighed by the depressing nature of the tale. You won't get any uplift from this!

So the US has a nuclear sub fitted out as a lab to research the worst viruses in the world, for use in offensive operations. The merit of doing it in a sub is that it gets around congressional restrictions on doing such things in the US (hey, ring any bells here?) Sailors get infected, of course, or there would be no story. One of the illnesses makes people chew off their own fingers, among other nastinesses.

Into this is dropped (well, boat-transferred, actually) a woman expert on disease spreading and control: she doesn't like the boat's purpose one bit, nor its uptight captain, and never really recovers from the exhaustion of the sudden journey to the sub. It's not a nice atmosphere.

They are in the Caribbean and what should happen next but that the Cubans decide to send out a sub of their own to play a little harassment game. Things just get worse from there.

The author is determined to share every last scrap of knowledge about the Navy, its traditions, formalities, ships and weapons. You know the sort of thing: "The 41,000 ton Wichita class oiler can carry 160,000 barrels of fuel, 600 tons of ammunition, and 300 tons of supplies for underway replenishment...." Same goes for lengthy explanations of weather formations, microbiology, and nuclear power plants. It's OK - up to a point. Doesn't often stop at that point, unfortunately.

One thing that did open my eyes, however, is that a modern active sonar sweep is not like the "pings" of old. It is a huge blast of sound - 200db, no less, if the author is correct. Now I fully understand why the Navy is blamed for the deaths and strandings of whales and dolphins. These highly intelligent mammals often drive themelves up on a beach. either to escape the suddenly terrifying ocean, or because they have lost their navigation ability or sanity when the tremendous shockwave blasted their ears and brains.

I'll give two stars because the writing is OK and the unfolding of the story can be interesting for the likely audience, those who like to lap up the arcane knowledge. For me personally, more like one star.

This book was the worst waste of time of the four decades I've been reading books. The story is leaden. The characters 2-dimensional. The story implausible. The endless techno-babble mind-numbingly boring.

In the opening chapter of the this novel a sailor goes mad and decides to kill himself by loading himself into one of the sub's torpedo tubes and firing himself into the depths of the ocean at 800 feet below the surface of the sea. By the time the reader finishes the first 100 pages of this snorer of a novel, he or she will be wanting to follow that first sailor out the same torpedo tube!

Pass on this one, unless you just enjoy SINKING your time into the same depths of oblivion that this novel so richly deserves to sink into.