Customer Reviews

The Spoils Of War

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This is a rather odd book coming after half a dozen others which were focused on the US navy and its aircraft. No dogfights in this one and not an aircraft carrier in sight. It seems to represent a new theme for the author(s) which is carried into the Falconer's Tale - espionage without much glamor. James Bond-style suave certainty is also very much absent from rather a dark and foreboding tale.

Post 9/11 and Alan Craik and his friends are still here but the mood has changed. There's an air of bitterness because the moral compass which identified America as something to believe in and something to fight for has been tossed out of the window by opportunists who used the event to justify their own agenda; people who have no qualms about becoming that thing they are supposedly fighting in order to gain their objectives.

Sounds familiar? Yes, it's rather close to the truth as it begins to emerge and reflects the way American people start to ask just exactly what they signed up for in the hysteria following the collapse of the twin towers. Craik and his friends witness those changes early and close up, and they don't like what they see. But they still have a job to do and they are not going to compromise their ideals. The inevitable result is frustration, burn-out and failure. There are few neat happy endings in such a world and this book doesn't contrive one.

The overall feeling is one in which the authors, themselves familiar with the world of intelligence from previous experience, are sounding a warning about what America has become, when truth and morality are thrown out for the lure of expediency. They don't like what they see either and that comes across very clearly in the tone of the book and the transference of ideals onto their principal characters. Which is not to say the book is boring. It isn't.

Slower paced than previous works, it is still a compelling read, in part because of the underlying truth and in part because of the abilities of Gordon Kent to write an absorbing tale with believable characters who are far removed from the cardboard cutout stereotypes of many such works. Read it but don't look for the cavalry to come to the rescue in the last couple of pages. It's not that sort of book.

I purchased this book for my husband. He did enjoy it and I was happy with the condition of the book and the speedy delivery.