Customer Reviews

The Last Boomerang

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What to make of this unconventional first novel that seems to work equally well on three levels? As a techno-thriller, it delves into the primitive state of the art of electronic intelligence a half century ago, capturing the audio clicks and clack of Soviet radar signals frozen in time on wire recorders "on the darkest night of the year" in a thunderstorm over the Black Sea. On another level, it plumbs the psyche of its straight-arrow pilot protagonist as he justifies a desperate romance by convincing himself that it and it alone insures the safety of his secret missions by deceiving their targets, only to find that he's gotten it all horribly wrong. And as a sophisticated political examination of the geopolitics of power and its balance in Nasser's Middle East, it does a creditable job of placing the players in their historic field positions in the game of influence and strife. In the meantime, we are treated to mini-tutorials on aircraft mechanics, celestial navigation, inter-service rivalry and old-fashioned skullduggery between an Admiral and a Field Marshall, both historic people, who seem to come alive and sweat the problem. Put them all together and the word "non-traditional" comes immediately to mind. A lot of fictional molds have been broken with "The Last Boomerang." This is a revealing, fascinating, delightful read.

This is the best book about Cold War exploits I have ever read, and it delves into a subject very few people are familiar with - our surveillance in the Black Sea during the fifties. The book is tightly plotted with an ingenious twist on the "duty-honor-country" theme, and it's the first book I've read in a long time in which each character comes alive to the reader. The flying sequence is just magnificent, and the author - whoever he is - really knows his background and his subject. I strongly recommend this to anyone of any age group or background.

This Naval Aviation/Spy thriller will captivate you. The mission flight 'over the Pond' is especially realistic. I should know. I flew this very aircraft on this type of mission in this location, but from a different operating base.

Pay close attention because the characters intertwine in intriguing ways and you are given lots of clues as the plot thickens. This book will appeal to anyone who enjoys a well crafted mystery. But it will be especially riveting for those with any aviation backgrould.

Highly recommended.

This is one of the most realistic, accurate and compelling books I have ever read. The author is from my home town but I do not know him. I was absolutely enthralled and fascinated by the story, the setting, the incredibly rich detail of the background material and the total realism of the aircraft flight scenes. This book has just about everything. It is exquisitely plotted -watch out it's complicated - and the tie-in with such familiar objects as the 1946 Dodge transmission, the marvelous music ("Blue Star") of the period and the intricate business of electronic intercepts in a thunderstorm blew my socks off. This is a really great book!