Douglas Reeman Novels (VII)
A DAWN LIKE THUNDER
Burmese Coast, 1944 ... After four years, the tide of war is turning in North Africa and Europe. The conflict in Southeast Asia, however, has reached new heights of savagery, and Operation Monsun poses a sinister threat to the hope of allied victory. The Special Operations mission off the Burmese coast requires volunteers. Men with nothing to live for, or men with everything to lose. Men like Lieutenant James Ross, awarded the Victoria Cross for his work in underwater sabotage, or the desperate amateur Charles Villiers, heir to a fortune now controlled by the Japanese. The two-man torpedo — the chariot — is the ultimate weapon in a high-risk war. Cast loose into the shadows before an eastern dawn, the heroes or madmen who guide it will strike terror into the heart of an invulnerable enemy, or pay the ultimate price for failure.
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BATTLECRUISER
January 1943 ... In their time, battle-cruisers were considered one of the great triumphs of the Royal Navy, as swift as a destroyer but packing a deadly firepower equal to any ship afloat. But the ships had one fatal flaw: their armour could be pierced by a single enemy shell. The Battle of Jutland exposed this Achilles’ heel, then further disasters followed in the next world war with the tragic sinkings of the Hood and Repulse. Of all her class, HMS Reliant and one other have survived. Reliant has the reputation of a lucky ship but when Captain Guy Sherbrooke joins her he knows he could be her last captain. As Britain prepares to invade occupied Europe, Reliant will be thrown head first into the conflagration. All those who sail in her know that there can be no half measures: only death or glory awaits HMS Reliant.
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DUST ON THE SEA
1943 ... This is the fourth book in the Blackwood saga. Captain Mike Blackwood, Royal Marine Commando, is a survivor. Young, toughened, and tried in the hellish crucible of Burma, he labours, sometimes faltering, beneath the weight of tradition, the glorious heritage of his family, and the burden of his own self-doubt. For him, the horizon is not the lip of the trench seen by men of the Corps in the previous war, but the ramp of a landing craft smashing down into the sea, and the fire of the enemy on a Sicilian beach. Here, tradition is not enough, and Mike Blackwood must find within himself qualities of leadership which will inspire those Royal Marines who are once again the first to land, and among the first to die.
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FOR VALOUR
North Atlantic ... Commander Graham Martineau has been awarded the Victoria Cross for pressing home an attack against impossible odds. Few survived the action, and the crimson ribbon remains a haunting symbol of the sacrifice of ship and men. Now, as captain of the crack tribal class destroyer HMS Hakka, Martineau must once again call from ordinary seamen the ultimate in courage, and prepare to defend to the death the vital convoys in the North Atlantic carrying sustenance for survival to Russia. There is no hiding place in these bitter Arctic seas, where a pitiless enemy awaits a final rendezvous.
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TWELVE SECONDS TO LIVE
Second World War ... The mine is an impartial killer and a lethal challenge to any volunteer in the Special Countermeasures of the Royal Navy. They are brave, lonely men with something to prove or nothing left to lose. Lieutenant-Commander David Masters, haunted by a split-second glimpse of the mine that destroyed his first and only command, His Majesty's Submarine Tornado, now defuses ‘the beast’ on land and teaches the same deadly science to others who too often die in the attempt. Lieutenant Chris Foley, mine laying off an enemy coast in ML366, rolls on in an uneasy sea with a release bracket sheared and a lie mine jammed, and hears the menacing growl of approaching E-boats. And Sub-Lieutenant Michael Lincoln, hailed as a hero, dreads exposure as a coward even more than the unexpected booby-trap, or the gentle whirr of the activated fuse marking the last twelve seconds of his life.
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