The Secret in Building 26: The Untold Story of America's Ultra War Against the U-boat Enigma Codes Review

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(More customer reviews)Until now too little has been said about the contributions of Americans towards decrypting either German ?Enigma? or Japanese ?Purple? ciphers. From 1941 until the end of the war the Americans and British collaborated ? in a sometimes prickly relationship ? with the desperate task of deciphering the messages sent between German U-boats in the North Atlantic and Grossadmiral Karl D?nitz, commander-in-chief of the German Navy. Fortunately for the allies, the admiral liked to keep in close touch with his fleet of U-boats, providing a steady stream of messages with clues to the U-boats? position and intentions.
In 1939, with Germany threatening to invade Poland, the Polish had turned over to their British and French allies all the work they had done during the previous nine years on the ciphers generated by a machine called an ?Enigma? that the Germans used to send secret messages. The Polish artifacts included a mechanical device called a ?bomba kryptologiczna?, or ?bombe? in French. In response, the British set up a Code and Cypher School (note the British spelling of cipher) at Bletchley Park. That story has been well told many times and the contributions of at least some of the men and women who served there ? most notably the mathematician Alan Turing ? have been publicly recognized.
In the United States much of the code breaking was done in Dayton, Ohio, by NCR in cooperation with the US Navy. The Bombes used in the US were designed and constructed in Building 26 under the leadership of engineer Joe Desch. Desch was one of many people who have never received proper acknowledgement for their work during the World War II because of the tight security surrounding their duties. Putting together their story has been a labor of love for Dayton reporter, Jim DeBrosse, and security historian Colin Burke. Be warned that there is very little about the technical aspects of Enigma encryption in ?The Secret in Building 26?, but there is a wealth of information about the men and women who worked ? often for years of long, hard days and under tremendous strain ? for the love of their country.

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Top Hook Review

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(More customer reviews)Everything looks great to Alan Craik and his spouse Rose Siciliano. The CIA appears ready to tap him for a highly regarded espionage position and the astronaut school has accepted Rose. Much faster than their rise to the top is their collapse caused by the machinations of someone else.

A woman in Venice blackmails CIA treasonous mole George Shreed. Panicking and already over the edge with his wife near death from cancer, George needs a fall guy who would have been on the project but not quite visible and with little protection to dub as the double agent selling secrets to the Chinese. He selects Rose. His covert actions lead the CIA to stop the promotions of Craik and Siciliano pending the results of an investigation into the activities of the duo. Their careers come to a halt but refusing to idly sit by as the taint of treason is painted on them, Alan and Rose begin their own inquiries into what short circuited their lives.

The third Craik-Siciliano thriller is loaded with action, action, and more action somewhat at the cost of character development. The story line emphasizes the shoot em up thrill a paragraph that never slows down, but for new readers Alan and Rose never seem quite real. Strangely the double agent is probably the most complete player in the tale as the audience understands his fears, doubts, and motives. Fans who enjoy an energizing espionage thriller will want to read Gordon Kent's latest global stimulating novel.

Harriet Klausner

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Tomahawk (Dan Lenson Novels) Review

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(More customer reviews)I have read the other David Poyer novels featuring USN officer Dan Lenson. They are THE MED, THE GULF, THE CIRCLE and THE PASSAGE. I liked all of them because Poyer, a Naval Academy graduate writes well about men and the sea.
I had trouble with TOMAHAWK mainly because Poyer turns Lenson into (in my opinion) a very unbelieveable character. While I will grant the possibility of a career naval officer falling for a peace activist, I think the way Poyer writes about it is unrealistic and I think readers who buy the premise are simply naive romantics.
For those who have never served in the officer corps of any of the armed forces, let me say this. Dan Lenson's misgivings about the TOMAHAWK as a then new weapons system would have caused him a lot of trouble. Since the system gave him a moral dilemma, it follows that those doubts would reflect in his performance. The doubts did and his OER (Officer Efficiency Report) suffered.
To be sure, there is an incredible amount of waste in military procurement but, I really think that if LT Lenson had or developed moral qualms about the weapons systems the US Navy was seeking to develop and procure, he owed it to himself, his service and his nation to resign his commission and find another way to make a living. Most officers who leave the service do so for a variety of reasons. Some of them hate the OPSTEMPO, the deployments, separation from family, living conditions/low pay, etc. All of these are reasons retention of personnel in the military today is heading SOUTH!!!
I served on active duty and am now a member of the reserves and I found Dan Lenson unbelieveable in this book. If I served with a fellow officer like Dan Lenson, I would probably sit down with him and recommend that he find another career path because he was deliberately shooting himself in the foot. Well educated Annapolis grads like Dan Lenson don't do that. If they have a problem with the system, they make their recommendations for improvements; if they go unheeded, they either shut up and press on or they request a transfer. If the navy itself is what's getting to them, they generally put in their resignation papers and head off to greener pastures.
I just couldn't find any sympathy for Dan Lenson. If Poyer writes another Dan Lenson novel and I read that he has become an Admiral, I think I'll be sick. Dan Lenson is not Flag Officer material, not even with all the fictitious license in the world.The way it was written tells me that TOMAHAWK should probably be the last installment in the continuing saga of Dan Lenson, USN.

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The Circle (Dan Lenson Novels) Review

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(More customer reviews)I was stationed on two FRAM-II Destroyers. I am a "Blue Nose", a "Shellback", and earned a Combat Action Ribbon while a crewmember on the USS Ozbourn (DD-846) off the coast of Vietnam. I am tired of all these glorified ("gun-decked")stories and movies about submarines and aircraft carriers, usually written by retired admirals or authors who were never even in the military never mind the navy. This story tells it like it is. I've often times wondered how young Ensigns dealt with the crap and stayed sane never mind got advanced and survive to make successful Navy careers. I truly enjoyed this book. I'm reading "The Med" now and I have also got "Passage" standing by. Only a "Tin Can Sailor" could have written this book. The terminolgy and slang terms are right on. I can understand how a person who never served in the Navy would have a hard time with this book. Perhaps Poyer should have a glossary in the back of his books to help decipher Navy jargon. I highly recommend this book, especially to former Navy anchor clankers. To Mr Poyer, from one ol' Tin Can Sailor to another, I bid you fair winds and follwing seas.

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Sweepers: A Novel of Suspense Review

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(More customer reviews)The novel begins with what appears to be a routine police investigation into what may or not be an accidental death. A beautiful woman is dead and her former boyfriend, a frocked Rear Admiral (lower half)assigned to the navy staff at the Pentagon may or may not be a suspect.
The young admiral, who had served in Vietnam years before as the skipper of a Swift boat plying the tributaries of the Mekong River has something of a past. His marriage ended in divorce like so many other military marriages. His only son, a real dirtbag and loser hates him and wants revenge. So does the ex-Navy SEAL who feels that young Lieutenant Sherman left him for dead so many years before.
As the case gets murkier, an old friend and mentor of RADM Sherman dies of a heart attack. Is it really a heart attack or a well disguised murder which hints at further retribution?
The Navy and local police get involved and the Judge Advocate General of the Navy (the JAG) also gets involved by assigning a female lawyer on the verge of retirement and an NIS (Naval Investigative Service) agent to the case. Things become very complicated very quickly and more than just Admiral Sherman begin to find themselves in jeopardy and facing real risks.
Since his first novel, SCORPION IN THE SEA, Peter Deutermann has only improved as a writer and storyteller. His former career as a Surface Warfare Officer, Arms Negotiator and Senior Staff Officer provided him with both an excellent background and volumes of material from which to draw his stories. He writes very well and provides his readers with all of the information necessary to understand the arcane ways in which the operational and staff sides of the Navy work on a day-to-day basis. He also fully develops his characters. While he doesn't do so too quickly, he provides just enough information on each of them to keep the reader wondering just what else he has in store for them. He also lets the reader hang just long enough until he drops the next vital piece of info. It is my opinion that Peter Deutermann has become a master of pacing and tension building and he has done much to create his own sub-genre in the larger arena of military and techno-thrillers. Call it the naval mystery if you will but understand that this specialized type of fiction belongs to Deutermann and Deutermann alone.
I heartily recommend this book and all of the others by this fine writer. His other books are NOT part of a series so it does not matter what order you read them in. If you like(ed) SWEEPERS then try OFFICIAL PRIVILEGE; it's where Captain Deutermann segued off and started writing naval mysteries.
His other books are all excellent, too and will provide many hours of suspenseful but enjoyable reading. I hope he continues to write for years to come. BZ Captain Deutermann! Thank you for many hours of reading enjoyment.

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The Command Review

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(More customer reviews)Dan Lenson finally gets command, but it is a mixed blessing. He takes over from a captain, who did his best to do nothing, and he is handed an experiment - the first integrated crew (male/female) on a warship.
Does Poyer have an opinion? I think so, and he tends to hammer it home through out the book.
Does the ship and crew sail into danger? Do they take casualties? Is there a bad guy out to get them?
Yes, yes and yes - why else would we read a David Poyer book.
Is it realistic - for the most part. I could have done without the four-letter diatribes and the knuckle-headed excesses engendered in a mixed crew, but that is also part of the story.
I swallowed this one in 2 sittings.

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After receiving the Congressional Medal of Honor for action in Iraq, Commander Daniel V. Lenson's new orders read: take over as skipper of USS Thomas W. Horn.His mission: prepare the Tomahawk-equipped strike destroyer and her crew for the Red Sea, where she'll join an international task force searching for weapons of mass destruction. But this will be no routine deployment.Horn will be the first US Navy warship ever to deploy with an integrated male and female crew-a controversial and politically explosive experiment that will raise questions about morale, behavior, training, sexual attraction, and ultimately, performance under fire.Facing sandstorms, smugglers, and ambushes, Horn's increasingly polarized crew will conduct demanding, diplomatically sensitive search-and-seizure operations against foreign vessels attempting to smuggle arms to Iraq.But the real nightmare's brewing in Bahrain.There, the most dangerous bomb expert in Al-Qaeda has targeted Horn for attack- as the first step in a plan to redraw the map of the whole Middle East.With gripping action scenes and an explosive climax, The Command continues Dan Lenson's star-crossed career in a series that explores both global and deeply personal implications of honor, duty, power, and war.

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Rules of Engagement Review

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(More customer reviews)an excellent first novel showing a racy, narrative style and a credible storyline with finely-drawn characters. The novel starts out aboard a US carrier, moves to naval intelligence and a several year investigation into espionage, culminating in a chase over many international frontiers into a military denouement in Africa. Good understanding of military matters and inter-service rivalries and a few subtle touches of romance make this a very good read for those who like Clancy, Patrick Robinson, Michael diMercurio and Peter Deutermann

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Black Storm (Tales of the Modern Navy.) Review

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(More customer reviews)In "Black Storm," Poyer subverts the conventional elements of military "thrillers." By underplaying, almost underwriting, the firefights, the political "big picture" background, he leaves room for what becomes a harrowing, deeply convincing, account of men, and women, in battle.
I have no military background at all, let alone combat experience. But Poyer's account of this fictional small-unit mission, by a squad of Force Recon U.S. marines with a Navy missle expert and a biological warfare doctor, during the Persian Gulf War rings true on every page. The achievement is all the more remarkable because his previous novels about the U.S. Navy today have usually been focused on naval and naval air themes.
Poyer captures the strange intimacy of a Force Recon unit, whose members may not even be friends, yet they must be willing to die for each other. As the mission progresses, the squad finally enters Bagdad, and the sense of physical and emotional claustrophobia is almost palpable.
The reader can share in the extreme isolation of these combatants, the constant pressure to avoid detection, to avoid battle, the obsessional nature of the mission objective -- to discover if the Iraquis have created launchable missles armed with a deadly smallpox variant, and if so, to destroy them.
By under-writing the traditional action elements, Poyer lets the characters, with all their flaws and doubts and problems, emerge ever more clearly, and surely, as the focus of our attention. Against all odds, the squad moves toward its objective by all means possible. Over and over again, we're aware of how things both great and small hinge on the decision, the choice of single member of the squad.
Often that is the squad leader, Marine Gunnery Sargeant Marcus Gault. In Gault, Poyer has created a remarkable portrait of the nature of small-unit combat leadership: "Black Storm" could almost (again speaking as a civilian) be a primer on the subject. As the team leader, Gault is continually facing and making life and death decisions, each one measured against the merciless standard of the mission's success.
But Poyer doesn't cast Gault, or any of the characters, in traditionally "heroic" terms. In fact, the character of a sociopathic, if not psychotic, British SAS sergeant, with whom the Marines make contact inside Iraq, acts as a mirror of how the same military virtues Gault displays have the potential to become monstrous.
It is the very "ordinariness" of Gault and the others that is so compelling: young men, most of them, with terrifying responsibilities. And yet..."they soldier on."
In the end we, at least we civilians, are left facing the awe-full mystery of men and women willing to sacrifice their lives.

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