Reader’s Diary

Bernard Cornwell

Cornwell continues to fill in the biography of Richard Sharpe in this book, which opens with a bereaved Sharpe relegated to quartermaster duties in England. He soon finds himself involuntarily involved in a secret mission to Denmark. The stock Sharpe motifs are here: the villain, the woman, and the battle. Books in the series may not surprise, but they continue to entertain.

The Copenhagen Expedition chronicled in the book is not the famous sea battle but a rather reprehensible British attempt to steal the Danish fleet. In the course of the “expedition” British forces shelled Copenhagen, with extensive loss of civilian life and property. As always, Cornwell provides an afterward in which he unravels fact from fiction. This is a practice I wish more writers of historical fiction would adopt.

Peter Schweizer and Caspar Weinberger

This book consists of several novellas about possible future conflicts involving the US. Some seem more likely than others - the story of a second Korean war seems far more probable than the one about a resurgent Japan with a powerful carrier strike force. The book is designed to make a political point: that America is unprepared to meet the threats of the 21st century. That point is more believable than it might have been before September 11, 2001, but at the same time, these scenarios are more like Desert Storm replays than the kind or warfighting that’s been seen in Afghanistan. Any one of the stories would make a great novel in the hands of a Clancy or Coonts; as they stand they are both interesting and sobering.

Herman Wouk

Most of my comments about “The Hope” apply to this, the second of Wouk’s two Israel novels. The high point of this one is a gripping fictionalized account of the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Wouk continues and concludes the story lines started in the first book, bringing his characters into the 1980s, but the story loses steam after 1973. Once again Arabs and Palestinians are conveniently absent from the story, appearing mostly as targets, if at all.