- Hardcover: 384 pages
- Publisher: St. Martin's Press (Mar 28 1998)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0312179758
- ISBN-13: 978-0312179755
- Product Dimensions: 23.4 x 16 x 3.3 cm
- Shipping Weight: 658 g
- Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
|
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||
Product Details |
Product Description
From Publishers Weekly
The latest in Poyer's popular series about the modern U.S. Navy (after The Passage, 1995) continues tracing the career of Lieutenant Commander Dan Lenson, a 30-something Annapolis grad who is earnest, hard-working and, considering the life he leads, surprisingly dull. Tapped in the Reagan years to work on the new Tomahawk missile program, unhappily divorced Dan falls in love with a peace activist, struggles in a crisis of faith (Are nukes necessary?), gets very drunk a couple of times and joins AA, loses the girl to murder on Washington's mean jogging paths, almost loses his own life in a Canadian blizzard (retrieving a failed missile), does yeoman duty in the cynical world of Congressional deal-making, nearly dies (again) in an FBI sting against Chinese spies, hands in his resignation from the Navy, changes his mind about it and works his tail off to save the Tomahawk missile program during an action against Libya. Everybody here sounds like everybody else except top brass, who tend to boom. Lenson's depth is apparently indicated by his care for his young daughter, who's in faraway Utah with his ex-wife, but he manages to speak to the girl only once in the book. His agonizing about nuclear weapons is sporadic and forced, while the book's relentless globe trotting and heavy jargon will be meaningful mostly to devoted Navy buffs.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
In the mid-1980s, Poyer's continuing protagonist, navy officer Dan Lenson, is a lieutenant commander holding a vital Pentagon position in the trouble-plagued development of the Tomahawk cruise missile. Long divorced, he is in love with Kerry Donovan, a peace activist who awakens in him new doubts about the navy's mission. When Kerry is murdered in connection with Chinese espionage involving the Tomahawk program, Lenson faces personal alcoholism and bereavement as well as professional crises--for instance, the deployment of the Tomahawk to the Middle East when it is only just barely operational. Congressional ineptitude, interservice rivalry, and corruption in beltway think tanks also complicate Lenson's life and the plot. Poyer's Lenson novels are so character driven that calling them thrillers is misleading, and here Poyer includes a solid cast of secondary characters who are thoroughly individualized yet serve to raise the ethical questions Poyer always brings to the fore. This demanding, excellent novel is probably the best so far in a major contemporary seafaring saga. Roland Green
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
Browse and search another edition of this book.
Browse and search another edition of this book.
First Sentence
Slowing for the exit off 395, Lcdr. Daniel V. Lenson, U.S. Navy, squinted into a sparkle like the sunlit sea. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
Slowing for the exit off 395, Lcdr. Daniel V. Lenson, U.S. Navy, squinted into a sparkle like the sunlit sea. Read the first page
Explore More
Concordance
Browse Sample PagesConcordance
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
Tag this product(What's this?)Think of a tag as a keyword or label you consider is strongly related to this product.
Tags will help all customers organize and find favorite items. |
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most helpful customer reviews
2.0 out of 5 stars
Illuminating, yet with glaring incongruities,
This review is from: Tomahawk (Hardcover)
The insights into weapon system development are fascinating. Yet a sub-plot and it's deriviatives require such a degree of naivety on the part of the protagonist and some of his associates made it difficult to suspend disbelief.
2.0 out of 5 stars
David Poyer turns left!,
By Ron Russell (Lodi, California United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Tomahawk (Mass Market Paperback)
"Tomahawk" was a major disappointment to this fan of the Dan Lenson series. "The Circle," "The Med," "The Passage," and "The Gulf" were outstanding and authentic, written with great skill by one who had "been there, done that." But it seems that Poyer underwent some sort of social/political rebirth just before writing "Tomahawk," for the book is filled with a boring mish-mash of alcoholism, girlfriend woes, and Lenson's highly unlikely involvement with a radical pack of peaceniks out to sabotage the development of the cruise missile. Too bad, for this could have been a fine tale if it had been crafted in the style of the previous four books in the Lenson series. If you subscribe to turn-the-other-cheek pacifist theories, you might like this novel. Otherwise, save you money and your disappointment--this is NOT the Dan Lenson you knew and loved in the previous stories.
3.0 out of 5 stars
Good, with some reservations,
By
This review is from: Tomahawk (Hardcover)
Overall, I liked this book, as I like the whole Dan Lenson series. Dan is not the typical hero of a military novel -- which is refreshing. He's basically a well-meaning doofus whose love life & career are invariably in the toilet. But he's good-hearted & he perseveres & he recognizes his own weaknesses. The plot & characterizations were good in this book, better than in the previous Dan novels. But, unfortunately, there's way too much techno-jargon. (I just skip over these parts.) ...if a naval officer ever behaved as Dan did in this novel, his career would be over, kaput. .... ...the novel makes it quite clear that it takes place in the '80s. I'll keep reading this series....
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
Want to see more reviews on this item?
|
Most recent customer reviews |
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
