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abibliofob's review against another edition
5.0
The Fighting Agents by W.E.B. Griffin is another great fun book to read. I have read everything by this author several times over and will continue doing so as long as I can read. This is the fourth of so far seven books in this series and later this year there will be a brand new one in stores. That is the reason for me rereading Men at War this time, apart from them being great. The fun fact about this book is that Griffin actaully knew Fertig and he also knew but didn't know the person who went ashore to supply him. When he found out the book was already written and that person no longer alive.
expendablemudge's review
3.0
Rating: 3.5 afternoon-passing stars of five
The Book Report: Fourth in the series Men at War, this novel takes the factual creation of the Office of Strategic Services by the administration of Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt another step on the road towards becoming the American spy service we know and love as the CIA.
My Review: Set laregly in the Phillippine Islands in 1943, this is one of the best military thrillers I've read. Griffin's grasp of WWII history seems to me, admittedly not a professional historian, particularly sharp--he seems to be able to stitch a story to every real event that happened anywhere in the world during his story's extent.
As is usual with Griffin's books, several storylines that don't seem related are made into a tight braid by the end of the book, and characters whose purpose was obscure are suddenly revealed to be central to the *actual* story that these perspectives unite to tell. What in tarnation could a loser in Cairo recruited by the CIA's precursor and a crack agent in Budapest, whose job is to prevent Nazi interrogators from torturing information out of prisoners he knows even if it means killing them himself, have to do with a -- well, unconventional, let's say -- guerrilla commander in the Phillippines?
Telling would be spoilering. Read it and find out. Griffin, a talented writer of some eighty summers (b. 1929), is still writing! Give his stuff a try. Even the military-fiction-phobic could find a thriller or two to enjoy.
The Book Report: Fourth in the series Men at War, this novel takes the factual creation of the Office of Strategic Services by the administration of Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt another step on the road towards becoming the American spy service we know and love as the CIA.
My Review: Set laregly in the Phillippine Islands in 1943, this is one of the best military thrillers I've read. Griffin's grasp of WWII history seems to me, admittedly not a professional historian, particularly sharp--he seems to be able to stitch a story to every real event that happened anywhere in the world during his story's extent.
As is usual with Griffin's books, several storylines that don't seem related are made into a tight braid by the end of the book, and characters whose purpose was obscure are suddenly revealed to be central to the *actual* story that these perspectives unite to tell. What in tarnation could a loser in Cairo recruited by the CIA's precursor and a crack agent in Budapest, whose job is to prevent Nazi interrogators from torturing information out of prisoners he knows even if it means killing them himself, have to do with a -- well, unconventional, let's say -- guerrilla commander in the Phillippines?
Telling would be spoilering. Read it and find out. Griffin, a talented writer of some eighty summers (b. 1929), is still writing! Give his stuff a try. Even the military-fiction-phobic could find a thriller or two to enjoy.
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