Haze grey and underway. Tin can sailors will love the book.

Great sea/air battle scenes and lots of them. John puts you right in the action. This is the third in a series of SAGAs involving Todd Ingram. The first two should be read first. I look forward to the next novel.

Best sea novel since "Time and Tide" by Thomas Fleming.

If you enjoy your novels featuring sea battles -e.g. the Hornblower series, etc.- you will enjoy this book. It is not your ordinary sea action story. It is a well written, literary fiction. The author, like Bernard Cornwell in his Sharpe series, uses an actual historic battle event as the setting for his story. In this case it is the naval battle in the Pacific in WWII between the U. S. Navy and the Japanese fleet. In particular it is centered around the Japanese attempt to retake Guadalcanal.
The action is real and the characters give a reader a real sense of what it must have been like while serving on a destroyer in these battles.
Without missing a beat in the action and drama, the author also interweaves into his story the introduction of an actual secret U. S. weapon that was deployed in these battles, namely, the proximity fuse. This and a few other sideplots increase the drama and one's interest in this book.
If you like this genre of fiction, then I also highly recommend a previous book by the author entitled, "The Last Lieutenant."
It's a great book to have on a summer vacation to be read by the sea.

A truimph to brotherhood. Great political and high tech battle and wonderfully written tale.

Lt. Todd Ingram is all that stands between a German spy and the revelation of U.S. preparations against the Japanese attack on Midway. This is a fast paced, well plotted story based on the true flight of Americans sailors and soldiers from Corregidor. The description of the bombardment of Corregidor and the ordeal of its defenders was captivating. The details are mostly accurate and the writing competant, but there are a few distracting lapses: a confusion between the words vice and vise, an inexplicable dearth of Aye, aye, sir in a story filled with naval personnel, a navy lieutenant calling an army major by his first name (majors outrank navy lieutenants), and Japanese depth charges detonate within milliseconds of each other. This would be a trick even with today's technology. Also this reader cringed when the author wrote Wham! six times in succession in four different places.
This aside, The Last Lieutenant held my interest when few novels do these days. As you might guess, I'm a tough critic. From this member of the Tonkin Gulf Yacht Club to the author, another member of that club, I say Well Done.

'The Last Lieutenant' tells the story of the brave men and woman who served on the fortess island of Corregidor in the Phillipines during the brutal Japanese onslaught and a fictional account of a daring escape. Lt. Todd Ingram and rag-tag bunch of navy and army men escape the horror of the Japanese attack in a small patrol boat with which they hope to make it to Austrailia. With the Japanese air force and navy hot on his tail Ingram must use all of his cunning to evade the Pacific aggressors. But Ingram has another mission as well: serving in a US navy uniform is a Nazi spy that knows the details about the Midway offensive. If this spy warns the Japanese in time what's left of the US Pacific fleet is doomed. The story that follows is a thrilling race between the two men to reach civilization. A lot of fun and a wonderful view of the battle for the Phillipines.

This book is full of great action; right from the 1st page of the book. This was the 1st fiction WWII book I 've read and it was great. I was enjoying the book so much that I ordered the next book in this series when I was only half way through this book! I would buy this book again!

Others have commented on the literary merits of this book, so I'll address its complex intermixing of reality and fiction. The author is pretty accurate on minor (sometimes unnecessary) details, but warps the big picture a lot. A major element of this novel is the outrageously poor performance of US Navy torpedos during 1941-43. In the real WWII, the major impetus for exposing this incredible scandal came from the submarine sailors. The destroyer force seems to have been mostly oblivious to the worthlessness of their major weapons system, even after the unbelievable "battle" against the burning hulk of USS HORNET described in Chapter 39. Yet Gobbell has heroic destroyer sailors uncovering the torpedo scandal. Furthermore, the fundamental cause of the defects was the monopoly on torpedo design and testing held by the Navy's own torpedo factory. Gobbell has invented a private corporation to take the rap instead, for no apparent plot purpose. Loyalty to the old school can be carried too far. Still, the book provides a timely reminder that overwhelming superiority in wealth, science and technology won't win wars unless these factors are converted into viable weapons handled by trained and motivated personnel BEFORE the war starts.

Like Gobbell's first book "The Last Lieutenant," "A Code for Tomorrow" is exciting and fun to read. The story moves at a quick pace and the action never stops. And any book that teaches me more about World War II is, in my opinion, a good book. "A Code for Tomorrow" accomplishes this, as Gobbell places Lt. Todd Ingram at the center of fierce naval battles at Santa Cruz and Cape Esperance.

Though the story is exciting and full of intrigue, I could not help but think that Gobbell based it on a James Bond movie. There are too many quick escapes and bizarre coincidences. For instance, a scene towards the end when Ingram and others are placed on a barge to be killed in a Japense torpedo practice exercise. That sounds more like a James Bond movie than anything have to do with World War II.

Still, I eagerly await Gobbell's next book "When Duty Whispers Low." Gobbell has a gift with his story-telling ability and knowledge of naval history. I very much recommend his books.

John Gobbell continues his characters and his premise in this latest book--forming fiction, suspense, espionage, and naval combat based in real, WWII history--and does so with the same flare and catch-and-hold-your-interest writing that can be found in "The Last Lieutenant" (his first book of the series).

As a connoisseur of techno-thrillers, suspense and espionage novels, I think Gobbell ranks up there with the greatest: Clancy, Coonts, Brown, et al. His weaving of actual WWII actions and history with some fictional characterizations is on-target and makes for a fun, can't-put-it-down reading. I highly recommend this--indeed all--of his books to the WWII action buff or general suspense-fiction reader alike.