Customer Reviews

The Shark Mutiny

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(13)
1 star:		(33)

 

 

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

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.

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.

I have read all of Patrick Robinson's previous novels and have noticed a steady trend towards the ridiculous. It would seem that after reading The Shark Mutiny he has reached it.

Enough of the Chinese and the Iranians already, please. Even Tom Clancy has different enemies from time to time. The characters are unbelievably cliched, the Australian Intel officer, give me a break, no one in Australia really speaks like that. From an Australians point of view it was embarassing. It doesn't end there, the Chinese leaders are portrayed as insane, but inept meglomaniacs, while the US leaders and military characters are seemingly invincible.

The way he portrays the SEALs is almost embarassing, boy does he love these guys. I think the author is masquerading as a SEAL recruiter! If I read one more description of their zero body fat physiques or their superior intelligence I was going to put the book down for good.

Through his characters the author portrays unbridled racism through the use of offensive and derogatory remarks about the Chinese and the Iranians. Does he really think that the senior military and poltical leaders of the United States speak like this?

The plot generally is confused and like most of his previous works, reminds me of an old episode of Batman, the old villain comes back, hatches a dastardly plan but the good guys come to the rescue and all the villain can say at the end is "Rats, foiled again!" If you don't believe me, read all of his other books as well. The ending is incredibly rushed and distorted when compared to the rest of the book. He wraps up several plot developments in a couple of paragraphs at the end of the book which took well over half the book to evolve.

Overall, he has managed to hide a good idea for a story behind poor plot decisions, poor characterisation and an inability to see beyond his own right wing views.

In this outer by the author of "Nimitz Class" (and other books, "Nimitz" being the only one I've read), the Chinese collude with Iran to mine the Persian Gulf and send oil markets skyrocketing. The west responds with numerous aircraft carrier battle groups, thinning out their forces elsewhere. Before the west can learn that the mining of the Persian Gulf is a ruse - to trick them into leaving China Sea unguarded - the Chinese launch a massive strike on Taiwan. Meanwhile, the US launches SEAL missions against the Chinese - the first at their petrol-refinery in the Persian Gulf, the second at their naval warfare complex in Burma - both resulting in heavy and unnecessary casualties. Both missions involve insertions from the USS Shark, an aging nuclear sub. Rick Hunter, the head SEAL and Dan Hedly, Shark's XO are boyhood friends from Kentucky, and when Shark's oddball commander belays an order that means life or death for the SEALs in both missions, Headly mutinys - a first in US history - to save both friend and mission.

This has to be one of the worst novels I've ever read. Besides some obvious spelling, factual or other errors (the AN-124 is repeatedly called an "Andropov", or Ruslan, which was the name reserved for the plane's record-breaking prototype; the real USS Shark not being a Permit or Sturgeon or ex-SSBN, but one of the older Skipjack boats which, by 2007, would be far older than 30 years old) or some questionable politics (Robinson lauds Ted Kennedy, unusual for technothrillers with their right-slant, but simply incongruous when his characters repeatedly refer to the story's villains as "chinks" and "towelheads"; the main characters explain the assault on Taiwan as centered on recovery of artifacts stolen by the Nationalists in 1949; the US military heads authorize an attack on China's Burmese port mostly because it symbolizes PLA expansion, never dealing with the complex morality that justifies our own power projection), there's Robinson's horrible writing - "his thoughts were clear and accurate", "vicious bullets" and my favorite "the M-60 rifle that could save their lives in an emergency", not to mention a hefty amount of words capitalized when force of character wasn't enough to connote force of will. Then there are the characters. None of Robinson's characters appear in the parts dealing with the invasion of Taiwan, which gives that campaign even less an air of reality than the rest of the book. Robinson's Iranians disappear shortly after their introduction, while the leading Chinese (who'd qualify for a Nobel were they able to pull off in real life half as much as they did in this book) disappear shortly after the climax of the battle for Taiwan. There's a brilliant analyst who, for reasons the plot never deals with, has a striking aussie accent - but he's discarded (presumably until Robinson's next book) once the Navy heeds his warning of mines in the Persian Gulf. As in "Nimitz" Robinson spends about as much time building background for his main characters as those who are dispatched soon after their arrival. Then there's the plot gaps: Robinson seems as able to hold onto the details of his own story little better than I could. Robinson creates a petro-shock, yet does little with it than mention price-hikes (life might as well be back to normal in the US and the rest of the world). Chinese soldiers are on guard in Burma, Robsinson writes, because of the previous attack in the Persian Gulf, but the massive assault on Taiwan isn't even mentioned. A shipment of mines is traced from Moscow to Iran via China, but the buildup of an invasion force headed for Taiwan goes completely unnoticed; again ("Nimitz" being the first time) Robinson has submarines ambush an American carrier without ever explaining how the subs penetrated defenses specifically designed to screen them. In a book full of plot twists that suspend belief, anybody will be able to pick their favorite - though mine would be the America's overkill in dispatching 8 carrier groups to the region, a scale never explained, and one that leaves them vulnerable on many fronts. The move is essential for the Chinese since it frees them to act on Taiwan, but Robinson never deals with why the Yanks so obliged the Chinese' plans, or whether Robinson's enshrined Adm. Morgan should take responsibility for doing so. Instead, Robinson devotes the rest of the book to Headly's court martial. Rather than a complex reason for the mutiny, Robinson cheats - the Shark's CO is a nut - a spiritualist who communicates with the skipper of the Russian Sub, Kursk and thinks he once lived as the ill-famed French commander at Trafalgar. What clinches things against him is his refusal to go the distance during either of the Shark's SEAL operations, a move which all but proves fatal in each encounter. Because Headley's heroism is so obvious. Navy leadership finds itself in the tight spot of prosecuting one of its own for an act of bravery beyond the call of duty. The wronged CO, though painted a coward, eagerly presses the mutiny case despite what it may bring to light. The resulting court battle won't rank up there with the epic combat of "The Caine Mutiny" or "A Few Good Men", and the litigators just repeat the same themes- a nutty submarine commander against a valorous mutineer. There isn't enough military detail to satisfy fans of Dale Brown or Coonts - just meaningless minutiae (like the names of warships introduced at the moment that they are destroyed, or about racehorses, of which you'll read more than you probably wanted to know) that nobody will accept as a substitute for plot. The ultimate insult is the scorn the principals pour on the ignorant media, though Robinson's lack of credentials would put him squarely with them. This was probably a bit much to write for such a poor book, but I gave this guy the benefit of the doubt after "Nimitz", and found my first opinion the correct one.

I must confess a fondness for Patrick Robinson novels. I am sure I read them with less than a critical eye because the author spends a part of his time on Cape Cod each year, and professes a love for the Cape Cod Baseball League. Nimitz Class was the author's best. This novel is pure escapism; like going to a Saturday afternoon movie on a rainy summer day, the reader is forced to suspend reality and a critical eye to be entertained. Robinson spends an inordinate amount of time in the book dealing with the Chinese naval strategy and cultural desire to reclaim the island of Taiwan. The time would have been better spent developing the basis for the mutiny on the submarine. As it was, the mutiny was such a small part of this book that I wondered constantly throughout the novel why it was so titled. There are too many pieces to the puzzle in this story to have it hang together nicely; there is a submarine commander who thinks he is reincarnated; the too long to describe childhood relationship between the Navy SEAL and the submarine XO officer; the National Security Director's reluctance to involve the President in foreign policy decisions; and the Chinese navy's strategy to regain control of Taiwan. Look, if it's accuracy you want, then this isn't the book for you. But, if you want an adventure, this might be just what the doctor ordered.

Patrick Robinson apparently had at least two books in mind when he wrote THE SHARK MUTINY, and couldn't decide which one to pursue.

Book One has to do with increasing tensions between the People's Republic of China (at least a few times called, incorrectly, the Republic of China, which actually refers to Taiwan) and the United States. The ultimate aim of the Chinese military appears to shift over the course of the story--even from the perspective of the Chinese characters. Is it the oil that China seeks? Is it restoring the glory of Admiral Zheng He of the Ming dynasty? Is it bringing Taiwan into the fold of the PRC? Is it, egads, to restore the treasures of Taiwan's National Palace Museum to China? The answer, it would seem, is largely the latter. In other words, war as an art heist.

Book Two, much smaller in size, is a submarine/Navy Seal adventure. Although there is some tiny bit of action pertaining to the USS Shark early in the novel, it's not until very late in the story that the book's title mutiny occurs. After that, there's a rather perfunctory and largely predictable court martial, and that's that.

No more about the oil crisis. No more about the war over Taiwan. No more about the art heist! Oh, boy.

All of the above threads would be of interest to the reader--even the weird plot dead-ends might have been forgiven--if the writing was any good. Here are the problems in brief: (1) the story was poorly researched, (2) howlers regularly appear (such as the "Republic of China" for the PRC), (3) promising action scenes turn out to be plodding, and (4) the dialogue is so wooden and stereotypical that it was laughable (the men are gruff and tough and the woman [sic] good looking).

In fact, the novel taken as a whole is such a disaster that it's almost kind of fun. It's unfortunate that the author hadn't taken more care with this; I think he may have won some readers with a better written, tautly paced thriller that focused principally on the mutiny.

Robinson's creative powers must have been on vacation.Like Nick Brett,Ive read Robinson's books in date order.When I was a little into the Shark Mutiny,Í began to realize that it was simply awful.His earlier books were high class techno-thrillers.Brett observes that Robinson has a fixation with Seals that made him uncomfotable.That was exactly my impression.Cloying is the word I would pick.

Poorly researched, only a one-dimensional understanding of US military policy. Plot is extremely weak, predicatble within the first 68 pages. Author pontificates his opinion of Senator Kennedy through the book's characters...too bad the author forgot how Sen. Kennedy so poorly treated the military during the Carter and Clinton years. Poorly edited. Characters had little or no development...what little development provided, was out of sync with the real armed services. Especially with time of service, officer promotions, time in grade for promotion, qualifiactions for Command at Sea.

I bought toe book to get me through a trans-Atlantic flight. Halfway through I put the book down an watched the in flight movie - which made more sense than this book...the movie was JOSIE & THE PUSSYCATS

The Shark Mutiny is the fifth submarine techno-thriller from Patrick Robinson. I enjoy Robinson's writing, since, in contrast to Clancy (whom I also enjoy), Robinson deals a little more extensively with the personal side of the characters that he develops. However, it didn't meet my expectations. The story, unsurprisingly, involves China and the Arabian Peninsula. Robinson generally toggles between the Chinese or the arabs as his bad guys. This time he combined both areas in the same novel. The Chinese and the Iranians hatch an intriguing plot, stringing minefields accross the Strait of Hormuz. This develops into multiple plots, which unsurprisingly involve Chinese interests in Taiwan. An alert intelligence officer gets ignored by his superiors so goes over their heads and helps to save the day. I found the plot a little boring. Also, I am not sure how well tolerated would be breaking the chain of military command, no matter how right the underlings are. So, this took a bit of a stretch of the imagination. Arnold Morgan is so overdone in parts that he starts to ruin the story. I find the political bias way too overt for my liking, and had I been the editor, I would have toned it down. The characters start to lose a bit of credibility because of this. Robinson should really take care with Morgan: he risks generating a boring novel because of him.