Official Assassin: Winston Churchill's Sas Hit Team [Paperback]

Peter Mason (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 425 pages
• Publisher: Phillips Pubns; 2 edition (July 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0932572316
• ISBN-13: 978-0932572318
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 5.9 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,690,306 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Where's the beef?, August 6, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Official Assassin: Winston Churchill's Sas Hit Team (Paperback)

I found this book - a few interesting bits heavily padded with material intended to provide color but which failed to engage my interest - to be the literary equivalent of a hamburger sandwich that is long of bun and short of beef.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Something isn't right here, December 30, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Official Assassin: Winston Churchill's Sas Hit Team (Paperback)

Having had the opportunity to serve in a number of U.S. Army and Air Force Special Operations Forces(SOF) units during my dual-service career--and therefore having some sensitivity to security concerns in this field--I approach with skepticism anyone making such flashy "I had a license to kill" claims. Beyond the outright wannabes, there is another group that has learned enough of the SOF lingo and lore to give their tales a seeming touch of reality when delivered to those who have never served in the clannish & closed Special Operations community. And as an author myself of three non-fiction SOF books, I find it unsettling when an author claims "writer's license" (Foreword, p. vii) with such apparent ease in writing what he himself admits is a composite picture of his adventures. Who can know what anecdotes actually happened? For all I know Peter Mason is everything he claims and more. But unfortunately what comes across in this book is someone needing to make some money after his military pension was "impounded" as the author reports.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars I'm sure the author could have done better, July 12, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Official Assassin: Winston Churchill's Sas Hit Team (Paperback)

While I don't doubt the author's credentials as a special forces operator and small arms expert, it seems to me that he has taken too many fictional liberties in an attempt to make the book more readable. In the book he tells one (not quite believeable) story of how he killed the nazi war criminal Ortgies, while on the tv documentary about his exploits a completely different version is told. This could have been a major exposé in the tradition of "Spycatcher" and "By Way of Deception", but unfortunately the book is written like a cheap spy novel. However, if the author had found a good ghost writer, I'm sure the book would have been an international bestseller like the two above mentioned books.