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11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
The Shark Mutiny, July 29, 2001
By A Customer
Do Patrick Robinson a favor and get this book from your library, or if you must own it, wait for the paperback. If his royalties fall off, perhaps he will submit to better editing. Robinson's characters are more properly caricatures. None of that bothered me much in his earlier works, although I always thought his national villains (especially the Chinese, who figure as modern-day Fu Manchus in this offering - more so than before) were rather one dimensional. I don't annoy easily, but this one did annoy me for a couple of reasons. First, early in the story (p. 11) and just before slamming the incumbent president (whose "shocking self-interest and lack of judgment" were the subject of an earlier work) he refers to the "vastly experienced Senator Ted Kennedy, whose unwavering patriotism and endless concern for his country make him always a natural leader among men." Now Senator Kennedy probably is all of those things, although I've never thought of him as a Defense wonk, but the line had nothing to do with the story - particularly with the use of the verb "make" as opposed to "made" - when everyone else in the scenario was referred to in the past tense. All I can figure is that Robinson met the senator at a cocktail party on Cape Cod (one of the author's homes according to his bio) and promised to mention him in his next book. Second, the great court-martial scene was just plain impossible. Robinson's acknowledgments state that he relied upon legal sources in the US Navy who didn't wish to be named. I can understand why they didn't wish identification, since the description of the trial is something out of a bad 19th century novel, and the procedures from beginnig to end violate just about every article of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Note to Robinson: 1) just because someone presses charges, doesn't mean there will be a trial, that's up to the court-martial convening authority and he can say no, 2) you forgot to include the Military Judge in the trial - someone would have noticed, 3) the president of the court has dammed little authority, and he NEVER makes rulings on evidence or announces the verdict, much less editorializes (the judge handles that, and he doesn't editorialize either), 4) a court-martial never includes someone of lesser rank than the accused, so the lieutenant would't be there, and if he were, the trial would be busted on appeal, 5) ballots are secret, 6) it takes a 2/3rds vote to convict; you only had three out of five votes and needed four, 7) the court doesn't recommend a sentence, it determines one, and both the verdict and the sentence are reviewed by the convening authority and at least one appellate court in a case involving the dismissal of an officer. And 8 (just to be really nit-picky) there is only one "Judge Advocate General" in the entire Navy; he's a 2-star admiral. Every other member of the uniformed Naval legal establishment is called a "judge advocate." Yes, we all know about literary license, but this was clueless, not to mentioned contrived. The action scenes were good, but read it at your own risk if you're looking for plausibility. and yes, I'm donating my copy (hardcover, I regret to say) to my local library. A JAG 0-6
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
New category-Techno-Fantasy, August 28, 2001
I am glad that I never read any reviews on the internet by amazon.com readers before I started to read all his books in a 2-3 week period.I am amazed at how much more critical and intelligent were the reviews by amazon readers than the likes of Adm.Crowe,Jack Higgins,and of course Clive Cussler. I think that Shark Mutiny is by far his worse book.I didn't notice the 1400 rather than 1600 Pennsylvania address but on rechecking it ,the reviewer was right.I am an avid watcher of JAG and I thoroughly enjoyed the review of the Captain (O-6)who wrote that the court martial was ridiculous in the extreme.For some reason Nick Nolte seems to me to be ideal in the role of Cale Dunning when he makes his amazing and ridicuolous comments during the cross exams and re-directs.I believe that the author stated there was a judge advocate "who was a former lawyer'but you never hear of him after page 430.Interesting points were brought up in the book at times but the ending annoyed me greatly.But on a larger scale and I hate to admit it especially after reading how many people thought that Robinson's books are ridiculous. I enjoyed the book.Robinson is so out of the park with his plots that they enter the realm of techno-fantasy. And once you get over that hurtle you can enjoy secretly that all SEALS are 10 feet tall and bulletproof. Little facts that M-60 (the pig) rounds (7.62x51mm) are four inches long are not true. .Actually M-2(MA deuce).50 caliber Browning machine gun shells are.(12.7x99mm).All of the other inaccuracies that I found picked up in the books by other people now were all explained by my realisation that we now have a new genre of airplane or beach fiction. Once we have gotten most of my worries about any semblance of reality I realized that I enjoyed the book precisely because it can go where other books cannot. It can have a non-elected NSA telling the SECDEF and the joint chiefs what to do.It can have this crazy admiral Morgan being incredibly politically incorrect and i just loved it.I am some what mystified that people think that 4 star officers do not use four letters words among themselves.I guess I am too insensitive to appreciate all the readers who thought that You cannot write Chinaman or towelhead if that is what Admiral Morgan called them.The point I am trying to make is that i think too many people are taking Patrick Robinson books too seriosly. If you read them as fantasy-fluff somewhat like Cussler who is a much better writer and not limited in that he doesn't pretend to be writing about a real US Navy ,you can have some fun but they are not Good clancy,Normal Larry Bond, or Regular Harold Coyle. You read them for laughs and hope Robinson doesn't break too many of the Laws of physics.you laugh at the preposterous court martial. But I kept turning the pages which scares me now because I enjoyed his screwball plots and crazy plot devices and impossible scenarios.They were a change of pace from the more realistic books and I had a few laughs in each book as we did the things I sometimes would like to do but don't have Admiral Morgan ability, charm,wit,luck.and the author's blessing. But I think in the future that Robinson will go on my B list of those authors who I wait for the paperback before I go and buy it.Now that I have figured out Robinson,I don't feel as ashamed at secretly enjoying us(USN) almost never loosing a man,and reading into the night.I thought after reading all the negatve reviews that I was loosing my grip.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Be glad Robinson's heroes aren't really running the Navy, November 20, 2002
It was with some hesitation that I picked up Patrick Robinson's latest book, "The Shark Mutiny." Robinson has a proven talent for plot lines, but his writing style often gets in the way of the telling. In previous novels, his contrived dialog and caricature cast has almost-but not quite-served to completely undo the story altogether. In "The Shark Mutiny," unfortunately, Robinson finally succeeds in writing a storyline check his cartoony characters and theatrical, overblown narration simply can't cash. As usual, Robinson's characters pontificate endlessly on the obvious. For example, one of the main characters, an intelligence analyst, offers his "expert" opinion that if someone had just ordered several hundred ship-killing mines, then that someone was "darned sure going to use them." And this is supposed to be one of the brightest stars in Robinson's military intelligence galaxy. The dialog in general is more reminiscent of a 1950s war film than a convincing study in human interaction. In an effort to add realistic detail Robinson freely trots out the accents and dialects, making his characters sound more like players in an overly-enthusiastic high-school play than real people. And the "heroic" men invariably demonstrate their masculinity and competence by smoking cigars, eating high-fat meals, and using the f-word. One particularly painful moment is when a submarine XO pens a note to his boyhood friend who is now the leader of a Navy SEAL team. The tone of the note is more reflective of the fond reminiscing of a romantic shore-leave interlude (it even ends with the phrase, "all my love") than a communiqué between two red-blooded (and, ostensibly, heterosexual) combat veterans. Dialog aside, Robinson's narration ventures with abandon into the realms of the melodramatic. His scenic descriptions of warships plying the high seas are meant to convey a sense of naval might and power, but instead come across like the wistful observations of someone who wanted to join the navy but didn't make the cut because deep water made him "nervous." In describing Admiral Morgan's (the book's primary protagonist) love for naval service, Robinson offers, "[His] soul, indeed, was held together by blue cord. And gold braid." Ouch. "The Shark Mutiny" also revealed that Robinson-a British citizen-hasn't outgrown his annoying habit of pointing out the subjective superiority of the British military establishment over its counterparts around the world. It sends a very curious message about Robinson's worldview when almost every description goes something like, "The American destroyer is one of the most powerful warships in the world, second only to Britain's own Piccadilly-Circus Class cruisers," or "The US Navy SEALS are one of the toughest special-forces institutions in the world, second only the Britain's own Special Air Assistance team," or "Admiral Morgan was one of the smartest Naval thinkers in the world, second only to Britain's own Admiral Sir Oliver Fauntleroy-Tweede." I'm not saying the author is necessarily wrong in his conclusions, just that his interjecting such opinions into his books exposes more about Patrick Robinson than it does about the plot. Then, there's the word "big." Based on the number of times this word was used in both "The Shark Mutiny" and his previous novel, "USS Seawolf," the only conclusion a reader can come to is that the author has either fallen in love with the word "big," or he has simply grown too lazy to think of another adjective. A "powerful" turbine is a "big" turbine. A wall-sized map is a "big" map. A "tall" man is a "big" man. A fighting knife is a "big" knife. In "USS Seawolf," the word "big" appears eight times on one page. And the trend continues in "The Shark Mutiny." The bottom-line? Next time I have the chance to pick up a Patrick Robinson book I won't be so hesitant. I'll just grab an old Alistair McLean book instead.
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