STEVE CARROLL WRITES

Though it is set during World War II, it would be somewhat disingenuous to refer to  The Hill  as a war novel. Written by Ray Rigby, a veteran of British television of the 50s and 60s,  The Hill  deals not with enemies on the battlefield but instead focuses on the escalating battles of will between disgraced British soldiers held prisoner in a Libyan wartime prison, and the authorities who lord over them within these barracks.  The title refers to a manmade structure, 60’ high and 200’ long hill of sand, that has been built in the middle of the grounds in order to provide a grueling challenge for the prisoners who are forced to march up and down its sides under the intense blaze of the desert sun. Our main character is Joe Roberts, a warrant officer imprisoned for insubordination for refusing orders that he felt would get him and others killed. Our protagonists consist of the other 4 prisoners in R...

I bought this book on a whim but was slightly reluctant about starting a noir crime thriller with a length of over 400 pages. Noir crime thrillers in my experience are best when they are lean and stripped of padding (like the Parker thrillers by Donald Westlake or the Quarry series by Max Allan Collins). The mistake was mine though in assuming that  Five Decembers  was just a crime thriller, as it is far more than simply that. Five Decembers  is simultaneously an action-packed period-set noir crime thriller, a murder mystery police procedural, a hard-edged unflinching view of war, a tragic love story, a multi-cultural adventure, and an espionage-infused cat and mouse chase around the globe. In a word, this book is genuinely EPIC! It’s 1941 and Honolulu cop Joe McGrady is getting his first big case after five years in the police department, investigating a particularly brutal double murder in which one of t...

Resistance #2: Magyar Massacre (1982) by Gregory St. Germain   After much online research I have been unable to determine   whether Gregory St. Germain was a house name or not, though I suspect it was.   Regardless, that is the name given to the author of  Magyar Massacre , the second in the  Resistance  series, published in the early 80s by Signet. The hook here is that Phoenix, the Dirty Dozen-style team of multi-national soldiers, is operating against the Nazis throughout Europe in secret missions that pre-date America’s official involvement in World War II. Led by stalwart American Scott Gideon, Phoenix is tasked with getting into Nazi-occupied Hungary and eventually Yugoslavia in order to recover a Count’s stolen art treasure that will be used to further fuel the Nazi war machine’s onslaught through Europe. It’s a nonstop action romp with stereotypical characters who are best remembered by their nationa...

Mac Wingate #2 -   Mission Code: King’s Pawn  (1981) by Bryan Swift (Bill C. Knott) Although three writers took on the name of Bryan Swift to pen the Mac Wingate series of World War II adventures, I started with the second one, credited to Bill C. Knott.  Mission Code: King’s Pawn  finds our hero, special agent and demolition expert Mac Wingate, tasked with putting together a small munitions team to parachute into Albania for the purpose of arming, training, and assisting Islamic anti-Communist guerrillas in their efforts to blow up a German gasoline and munitions dump. The plan hinges on Mac’s ability to successfully unite the disparate factions of the rebels under the leadership the Albanian king’s cousin.  The plot hops effectively from Cairo to Malta to the mountains of Albania. Clearly films such as  The Guns of Navarone ,  The Dirty Dozen , and  Where Eagles Dare  had...

Play Dirty   (1969)   by Zeno Zeno (real name Gerald Theodore La Marque) was a veteran of the 1st Airborne Division and wrote 5 books, nearly all of which were authored while serving a 10-year prison sentence for homicide in London.  Play Dirty  is a novelization of a screenplay by Melvyn Bragg and Lotte Collin for the film starring Michael Caine.  This is a classic “men on a mission” type story of a ragtag group of soldiers forced to work together to achieve a seemingly impossible task during the North Africa campaign of WWII—blow up a heavily protected German fuel depot in the desert.  Our main protagonist is Captain Douglas, an employee of British Petroleum serving in the Royal Engineers, who is strong-armed into leading a raiding unit of criminals on what could be a suicide mission. His second-in-command is Leech, a sociopathic (and potentially psychopathic) convicted...

Commando #1:   Operation Arrowhead  (2019) by Jack Badelaire Author Jack Badelaire describes this series as military adventure pulp fiction, and what a fitting description that is. Set during Hitler’s blitzkrieg across Europe,  Commando  deals with a crack unit of elite light infantry raiders capable of taking the offensive to the Nazi troops in occupied territories.  The action in this first installment takes place in France with very little backstory or history beyond a prologue that grounds us geographically and explains the formation of the Commando units. Our main character is Lance Corporal Thomas Lynch and we’re introduced to him and his team in heavy action as they engage the Germans immediately.  From there the entire book is virtually a non-stop minute-by-minute account of battle with small but tense reprieves. There’s not a lot of character arc, but that is not to say...

Soldier of Fortune #11: Yellow Rain  (1984) by Peter McCurtin After a several years hiatus Peter McCurtin resurrected the Soldier of Fortune title with #10,  Yellow Rain , in 1984. A few authors are known to have taken on the McCurtin mantle to write this series, among them men’s adventure stalwart Ralph Hayes.  Yellow Rain  however is fully attributed to McCurtin personally, so I was excited to dive in, especially since I had never read a Soldier of Fortune book.  Please forgive me for wading into this slim book with the expectation of wall-to-wall action with little character development or depth of political shading or geographic and cultural detail. Instead I discovered a slow burn of a rescue operation with more of an espionage vibe than a military firepower one. In fact, I was reminded of the master himself, Ian Fleming, in the way McCurtin takes the time to make the ...