Wargaming Wednesday: Not Just Dungeons and Dragons

Dungeons and Dragons was the first pen-and-paper tabletop role-playing game I ever encountered. I started playing in the summer of '93, when two of my friends had the "Big Black Box" edition of the DnD Basic Rules set. For those of you who know what the BBB version is...well I don't need to tell you anything. For all you newbies out there, this was a really big intro boxed set that had a ton of "rules cards", a big map adventure, tiny cardboard monsters and PCs...basically everything you'd need to play the first few levels of your characters - which is not unusual for the D&D boxed sets - but in a larger format, with full-color maps and cardboard counters.

Up until this point, I really hadn't been into "Fantasy", but I had read the first three Dragonlance books (that's a post for another day), and so I had some idea of what I was getting into. Needless to say, I was immediately hooked - in fact, far more than the two other people I was gaming with. I quickly bought the 2nd Edition Player's Handbook, Dungeon Master's Guide, and Monster Manual, and the over the next few years, I bought EVERYTHING that TSR produced - settings, Class handbooks, DM's guides...the works. The biggest problem, unfortunately, was lack of players, since I was living in a fairly rural small town in Maine, and my high school peers, for the most part, weren't interested in gaming.

When I moved off to college in 1995, I brought most of my gaming materials with me, certain that I'd be able to find a DnD group at a large urban university. But of course, as soon as I found some nerdy brethren and asked who played D&D, I received mocking laughter. "We don't play that game, you dork. We play White Wolf games. Those are real role-playing games".

I got sucked into a Werewolf: the Apocalypse game, and really enjoyed it, and I played a little Vampire and a little Mage as well. My RPG tastes began to grow, and I started buying other games, surprised that there were dozens of games put out by a wide variety of publishers in any genre you could think of. And of course, this was the late '90s, when the Internet gave us the ability to communicate around the world and share documents online with each other, enabling the explosion of what is commonly known as the "indie gaming" revolution. New voices emerged in the industry, edgy people with games that strayed far from the staid boundaries of D&D, GURPS, Rifts, World of Darkness, and other, more established platforms.

Fast-forward twenty years, and the more things change, the more they stay the same. Dungeons and Dragons is now well into its fifth - and most popular - edition, and most of the old guard are still around in one form or another. But smaller, indie presses and self-published games continue to arrive on the scene almost daily. In addition, the disdain most D&D folks had for the 4th edition rules, coupled with the death of D&D co-creator Gary Gygax back in 2008 sparked the "Old School Renaissance", where many gamers went back to the old editions of the game, breathing life back into them and using the bones of their rules sets to create a huge variety of different games.

Over the decades, I've collected a lot of role-playing games. Far more than I ever have, or ever could, play. I don't know what the current number is, but it is probably creeping up towards a hundred different RPGs and/or editions. And yet, that barely scratches the surface of what's out there, even from larger game companies, never mind "indie" developers. It's interesting that Dungeons and Dragons is more popular and more mainstream than it has ever been, and yet, most people have no idea of the immense variety of games out there - settings, play styles, rules types - whatever your interests might be, there is likely a game for you. And, just to give a minuscule taste, here's a YouTube video I watched last night, which dips a toe into the fathomless pool of games out there:

Yes, the video is a bit long, but if you have any curiosity about role-playing games, it is definitely worth your time to watch, and certainly better than me trying to pitch a bunch of different games. Oh, and it is worth noting that of the ten games they mention, I only own one of these - Call of Cthulhu - and it's an old edition. So if I own nearly a hundred RPGs, and only 1 of them is on this list, that gives you some idea of the variety out there.

Tom Clancy Classics: The Hunt for Red October

(Yes, I know it's been over nine months since I wrote a blog post. That's a loooooong story. But here we have a new post, so...yay!)

Back in high school during the early 1990s, I started reading Tom Clancy's novels, and continued to do so into college, where I finally stopped when I tried reading The Bear and The Dragon, which was so gigantic a novel and so deeply entrenched in Clancy's fantasy universe (because by the time Clear and Present Danger came along, the series was no longer a "might be happening right now" and in the realm of pure speculative fiction) that I just had no interest, especially since this was right around 9/11 (aka, sixteen years ago). I haven't gone back to read any Clancy since then, but I found myself iin the mood after visiting Battleship Cove in southern Massachusetts, where they have the USS Massachusetts, as well as a destroyer, a submarine, and an East German missile frigate.

There will be spoilers ahead, since THFRO was published over thirty years ago, and the movie came out over a quarter-century ago. If you cared that much about spoilers for either, you'd have read/watched them by now. Also, I'm not going to write a synopsis - that's what Wikipedia is for.

First off, I love the THFRO movie. It has a great score, great acting by everyone, some excellent submarine combat scenes, and just an all-round great "techno-thriller" feel. I think that term, "techno-thriller" gets thrown around way too much lately, but THFRO is really one of the first novels to define the genre, and while the movie demonstrates some of the elements, it is in the novel where the elements of the Techno-Thriller really shine, because so much of the book's detail comes in not only Clancy's passion for technical precision, but in now military technology - both intelligence gathering tech and combat tech - plays a crucial role in the story. There's a whole scene around an Alfa-class Russian submarine suffering a reactor incident that, while extremely technically dense, creates a sense of impending dread in the reader as each aspect of the reactor failure is detailed, culminating in the fatal sinking of the submarine. While not everyone enjoys that level of detail, you have to admit that Clancy was very good at laying the details out and using them to ratchet up the tension of the story.

I've probably watched the movie ten times, but as this was the first time in probably 25 years I've re-read the novel, I was impressed with how much of the book has nothing to do with Ramius and Ryan. A lot more of the novel is given over to the standoff between the US and Soviet naval forces, something that is just touched upon in the movie where a Tomcat collides with a Russian plane and makes a crash landing on the carrier's flight deck. The novel really does a great job of showing the vast scope of the operation, from both sides.

Speaking of the opposing side, we have to discuss Captain Tupolev. In the novel, Tupolev is a former student of Ramius', but he goes after his old mentor out of duty, not some insane, bug-eyed obsession. Stellan Skarsgard was fine in his role, even if it was fairly limited, but the movie's Tupolev was a sweat-sheened, chain-smoking madman who would risk a reactor incident in order to catch and sink Ramius. The novel's Tupolev, at the end of the story, stumbles across Red October by accident, thinking it is an American Ohio-class missile submarine. You cheer Tupolev's death when you watch the movie, but I was actually sad to see him die in the novel, because it is clear he's rather conflicted, especially as in the novel, the submarine duel is three against one, no two against one as it is in the movie.

Other things of note?

In the movie, the fight with the saboteur takes place during the submarine battle, while they are separated by a couple of days in the novel. Ryan is also described in somewhat more unflattering terms in the book, a wealthy desk jockey with a bit of a paunch who was a second lieutenant in the Marines for three months (years in the movie) before being injured. Interestingly, the events that take place in PATRIOT GAMES are mentioned in brief in the novel, but not in the movie, which is interesting. I wonder as to the reason Clancy included that little side-note at all, unless he was already writing PG when finishing THFRO and decided to slip it in at the last minute.

In the novel, neither Jim Greer or Sonarman Jones are mentioned as being African-American. I think it was great that Hollywood (in a rare display) diversified the cast a little in picking two actors of color for those roles. Interestingly, though, there was a black submarine officer aboard the Dallas, who disappears (or isn't cast as such, I can't keep track of all those characters). So, the balance is really more like +1, instead of +2.

It's amazing how much of the novel gets cut away in order to make the movie. And the movie moves at a truly break-neck (no pun intended...) pace. There's also almost countless POV shifts, something that is a Clancy trademark in most of his novels, and something that many thriller readers and critics I know dislike - they prefer the story stick to the POV of just one character. As popular as he was, Clancy's stories and his writing style were not designed for the "average reader" in mind. You had to be able to keep track of many characters and be able to read, comprehend, and follow along with a lot of dense technical information.

Also, for a story that deals with so much cutting-edge technology, and still reads well 30+ years later, I did have to chuckle a bit when they start talking about computers, because their specs seem so antiquated now (I looked up the Cray-2 supercomputer that gets used in the novel - a 2012-era iPad is more powerful than the Cray-2). This isn't a fault of Clancy, of course, so much as it is a sign of just how far computing has come since the early 1980s.

Anyway, that's enough for now. Please feel free to leave any comments, and we can keep the discussion going!

BOOK REVEW: ALPHA by Greg Rucka

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This was a surprisingly solid novel. I was dubious about the premise of a Die Hard-like story set in a Disney World analogue, but Rucka pulls it off with aplomb. The crafting of Wilsonville, from its history to the mythology behind the characters and the way in which they interact, was very well done - I think I'd rather vacation there than DW any day (well, except the day of the attack...).

Jad Bell is an interesting character, competent but at least moderately realistic in the sense that while he's your typical "Tier One" type, there are a number of little details that give him a surprising degree of humanity. The choice of making his teenage daughter deaf, and weaving in chapters written from her perspective, gives this story a very unique feel. I also appreciated the complexity of the sleeper agent, his relations with the other terrorists and his superior, and the chain of planning and events leading up to the attack. The door is definitely left wide open for more books in the series.

I have been a fan of Rucka's since he wrote the excellent spy comic QUEEN AND COUNTRY, and I read his Wolverine titles as well. He's written some Punisher too, although I haven't checked it out yet, but after reading ALPHA, I think I need to make it a priority. This novel is highly recommended, and I'm eagerly awaiting the next book in the series.

Teaser Post: HANGMAN: SAN FRANCISCO SLAUGHTER

I just wanted to take a moment and update readers on one of my current projects. I'm working on a new novel, tentatively titled HANGMAN: SAN FRANCISCO SLAUGHTER. Those of you who've read KILLER INSTINCTS might get the reference, but for those of you who missed it, "Hangman" was Jamie Lynch's call-sign while a member of SOG during the Vietnam war. Jamie is the uncle of William Lynch, the protagonist in KILLER INSTINCTS. Jamie is also the older son of Thomas Lynch, the main character in my COMMANDO series.

This (first) HANGMAN novel is being written for two reasons. First, to bridge the generation gap between Thomas and William Lynch. When I originally began writing KILLER INSTINCTS, my intent was to go back through the generations and write about each of the Lynch men who went to war, what I'd called at the time the Lynch Legacy. The first COMMANDO novel was the first completed volume in this idea, but I'd actually written the first thousand words of HANGMAN while writing KILLER INSTINCTS. Only now, over two years later, am I finally going back and writing the rest of the story.

The second reason for writing this book is to try and write a kick-ass '70s-style Men's Adventure novel. In 1973, Jamie Lynch has been out of the Army for a little less than a year, and he's going stir-crazy living the life of a beach bum in San Diego. After getting in touch with his old commanding officer, Jamie is given a job working for Steiger, a Silicon Valley CEO. One of Steiger's top engineers has gone missing after stealing a prototype for an ordnance guidance system, and Steiger fears the prototype will fall into the hands of one of his competitors. Lynch teams up with Blake, Steiger's chief of security, as well as an enigmatic mercenary gunslinger named Richard...

SAN FRANCISCO SLAUGHTER is going to be violent. It's going to be crass. It's going to get ugly. People are going to get killed in not-very-nice ways. There's a lot of drinking and swearing and even a little sex. There's cars and guns and arson and torture. The good guys aren't so great, but the bad guys are even worse.

I'll probably have the first draft of the manuscript finished by the first week of April. I'll be looking for some beta readers, so if you're interested, shoot me an email and I'll put you on the list. My target date for publication is June 1st.

Book Review - Death of a Citizen by Donald Hamilton

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Many readers of this blog are already familiar with Hamilton's Matt Helm novels, a series of books that set the gold standard in many people's minds for the "hard-bitten secret agent", Matt Helm.

Rather than writing a long lead-up explaining the series, I'll offer up this link to a website dedicated to the series.

Recently, the Matt Helm books have begun to see a reprinting facelift, including ebook versions. I've got a couple of the vintage paperbacks, and I read the seventh book in the series, The Shadowers (my review can be found here). While I have Death of a Citizen in vintage paperback now, I decided to buy and read the new ebook version, since my paper copy is definitely old and a bit fragile.

The ebook was well-formatted, and I don't recall any really glaring formatting or OCR-related errors. There might have been a couple, but they clearly didn't stand out so blatantly as to make me take undue notice. And, while the covers are pretty generic on these new reprints, they are at least stylish and professional-looking.

In short, the story behind Death of a Citizen is simple. Matt Helm was a special operations agent who carried out assassinations and other "black ops" during World War Two. Now, he's a family man, with a wife and small children, a "citizen" living an ordinary life until an old acquaintance, a former fellow agent and lover, comes back into his life. Literally overnight, Helm is dragged kicking and screaming back into the world of covert operations, and by the end of the book, we've seen - ta daaa - the "death" of citizen Matt Helm, and the re-birth of counter-espionage agent code-name Eric. 

Overall, the writing is excellent, the pace is quick but not sloppy, and the action is decisive and brutal. Hamilton writes with a blunt economy, and as the story is told from the first-person perspective of Helm, we can see almost immediately that those predatory killing instincts were not lost - they were only sleeping. Helm left his soul shredded and discarded on the battlefields of Western Europe years ago; he's now as ruthless and unrelenting as The Terminator.

If you like hard-bitten Cold War-era espionage thrillers that pack a lot of character and action into short, fast reads, you need to get your hands on these Matt Helm novels. The ebooks and paperbacks are reasonably priced, so treat yourself to Death of a Citizen and enjoy.

Movie Review: Skyfall (2012)

Better late than never? I'm actually ashamed to admit that this is the first Bond movie I did NOT see in the theater in close to 20 years. The end of 2012 was just too busy for me and it never worked out, something I'm really not happy with. However, being able to rent the movie on Amazon Instant in HD, on a television good enough to make it worth the viewing, does alleviate my guilt to a small degree.

Also note, I'm not going to give a review of the plot. Click this link to read that if you haven't seen the film. I'll try to avoid spoilers, but hey - it's a Bond movie.

I have mixed feelings about this film. On the one hand, although there are a few very cool nods to the fact that this is the 50th anniversary of the Bond franchise, this really isn't a "Bond Movie", or rather, it's sort of half a Bond movie. The first half of the film is very classic Bond, but I felt like the second half was something much darker, much more dramatic - more of a character introspection piece, delving into Bond's past far more than any previous film has done.

First, there's also the very complex interactions between Bond and M, far more than the typical verbal fencing that has taken place in all previous films. Examining the role of the Agent (or as Bond says, "Provocateur") and how it fits with M's role of the Controller (or as Bond says, "Bitch"). Judi Dench has always been very good at portraying M as someone who always puts the Mission before the Agent, no matter what. This is obviously a hard burden for her, but one that she has accepted without complaint. As well, Bond has come to terms with his role as Agent, understanding that ultimately, he is an expendable, if expensive and rare, asset. His interaction with Eve after his "resurrection" shows that he knows perfectly well she did what she had to do, and there were no hard feelings - Bond would (probably) have done the same thing in her place.

Also interesting was the comparison between Bond and Silva. It is made clear to us that Silva is Bond's possible dark future self - a reflection of what Bond could become, if he allowed emotion and ego to overshadow his duty. Bond recognizes this, of course, but whether it is out of a stubborn, personal refusal to be anything like Silva, or an understanding that he needs to rise above the comparison and hold the Mission above all else, he rejects his dark reflection and owns his role in the bigger picture.

Finally, the visit to Skyfall Lodge, the trip into his childhood, is very out of character for a Bond film, but in this case, I think it suits the second half of the film quite well. What path will Bond take - the road to becoming his own person, or returning to his role as Agent - Instrument really, of MI6.

All in all, I really enjoyed the film. It took a very unexpected path, but frankly, after 22 previous films, I didn't need to see Yet Another Bond Movie.

Lastly, to go all gun-crazy for a moment, it was nice to see the PPK/S in use - Bronson's adoption of the P99 was fine, but the nod back to the classic Bond gun (although according to imfdb.org the original Dr. No pistol carried by Sean Connery was a Walther PP, not a PPK) was welcomed. The "palm reader" should have been cut, however; giving an agent a pistol he can only use bare-handed is foolish, never mind a weapon that is packed with technology that can fail, be hacked, or otherwise compromise the integrity of the weapon's usefulness (never mind that it means Bond would be leaving fingerprints not only on the gun, but wherever he went). A secret agent is going to want an anonymous, disposable weapon that in no way ties itself to him, never mind his government, and the weapon needs to be able to function with gloved, dirty, or even bloody hands. This little detail should have just been left out.

Book Review: Sold Out by Stan R. Mitchell

For many authors, the axiom of "write what you know" is probably better expressed as "write what you love to read". I mean, I wrote Nanok and the Tower of Sorrows because I love to read schlocky Sword & Sorcery fiction, not because I'm a post-apocalyptic barbarian swordsman who's always fighting sorcerers, demons, and mutants. A lot of us read and enjoy stories about things for which we don't really have any real world experience, and when we decide to try our hand at writing our own stories, I think many of us attempt to create something that emulates that which we love.

For Stan R. Mitchell of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, this concept turned into his novel Sold Out. Not only is Stan a former Marine, he has a love of books like Stephen Hunter's Point of Impact and Pale Horse Coming, and Sold Out could easily have been another book in the Bob Lee Swagger series of Hunter's novels. The story follows Nick Woods, a former Marine Corps scout-sniper who has found himself a life away from violence and bloodshed, although he's still more than a little paranoid, and definitely damaged goods. But when a top-secret assignment from his USMC days bubbles to the surface, exposed to the world's media, the architects of that assignment - and the failed cover-up that resulted in the death of Nick's spotter - move to take Nick out of the picture.

I won't go into too many spoilers, but let's just say, they make Nick angry. Really angry. Like, nothing to lose, no reason to live, from Hell's heart I stab at thee angry. So Nick goes on a crusade of vengeance and retribution to put paid to those who've made his life a ruin.

And when Marine scout-snipers go on crusades of vengeance and retribution against you...you're pretty much fucked.

Sold Out is a very fast, action-packed novel. There's a lot of chapter breaks as we shift perspective between Nick and his reluctant partner Allan, the disgraced reporter who inadvertently ruined Nick's life, as well as the bad guys trying to hunt Nick and Allen down. Some people dislike constant shifts of POV, but here I think it works very well - I consider it a more "cinematic" style of writing, where the camera and story line cuts back and forth between both sides of the conflict. It isn't the sort of technique that works great in a "thriller", where the motives and movements of the antagonist need to be shrouded in mystery, but in a more straight-up action piece, I think it's fine.

Speaking of action, Stan writes the fight sequences quite well. There aren't many big running gun battles, but as the story really focuses on one guy - a sniper no less - against a small army, a "running gun battle" would probably end in disaster for the protagonist. However, Stan deftly handles the tension and the pacing, making every battle a page-turner.

All in all, if you're a fan of Stephen Hunter's books, and "wronged man seeks bloody retribution against powerful asshats who deserve to die" stories in general, you're going to really enjoy Sold Out. Highly recommended.

Book Review: The Librio Defection by James Hopwood

Jarvis Love is a newly minted field agent - young, bright-eyed, and eager to serve for King and Country. But when he's given his first assignment, it turns out to seemingly be a sideshow to the real operation - the defection of a world-renowned Russian violinist. Love travels to Milan, where he's to find Belladonna Librio, the violinist's mistress, who also happens to be - ahem - a "professional companion".

What starts off as a simple snatch-and-grab turns into a deadly battle of wits, fists, and gunplay against a Russian KGB major and his crew of muscle-bound thugs. Love discovers reserves of physicality and determination he never realized he had, and by the end of the operation, Love has gone from naive rookie to blooded veteran.

I thoroughly enjoyed The Librio Defection from start to finish. Hopwood writes clean, crisp prose that moves fast and fluidly from scene to scene. The descriptions of Italy are brief but vivid, especially during the car chases and other travel sequences, giving the book the needed realism without a burdensome level of detail.

As for our main character, I found myself cringing at Love's early bumbles, then later cheering him on as his confidence grows and Love steps up to the challenges of his mission. This is a perfect "origin story" for a Cold War British spy - a sideshow mission that balloons into something much more complicated and dangerous.

I'm definitely looking forward to more of these 60's-era spy stories, because it's a world so filled with adventure and ripe for endless storytelling.

Movie Review: Zero Dark Thirty (2013)

They say if you want to keep a happy workplace, never discuss politics or religion. This is something that I completely agree with, and since I consider this blog my "workplace" as a writer, I avoid political debates and other real-world issues because I don't want to see it turn into yet another place for folks to get lathered up over gun control or the war on terror etc..

So I'm going to try and review this film purely as a film, and not as the political fire magnet it has become. Some people might think that's me wimping out, but it's really just me not wanting to get into one of "those" arguments. For better or for worse, here we go...

I saw the movie at a Friday afternoon matinee. I have always been an advocate for the "theater experience" and with this movie I think that holds extremely true. There is something about the way a good theater experience immerses you in the film that watching at home simply lacks. There are too many distractions, and you lose focus too easily. A good theater experience is like a sensory deprivation chamber, taking away everything but the sounds and images of the film. For Zero Dark Thirty, I think that experience is vital. If you have any interest in seeing this film, do so in the theater.

The movie starts off with a blank screen and the sounds of a bunch of 9/11 phone calls, and more than any moment in the "torture" segments of the film, this was hard to sit through. Over eleven years have passed, but hearing some young woman ask a 911 operator "I'm going to die, aren't I?" and then have the phone go dead a few seconds later is incredibly rough. I think this was a very sneaky but clever decision on the part of the film makers, to remind everyone what was going through the heads of the CIA agents and operators during the events of the film. Make no mistake, this is a revenge thriller, at its heart little different than Death Wish, and should be viewed through a similar lens despite its historical context.

Next comes the infamous torture sequences. Are they graphic? I suppose, but although this might classify me as a Grade-A Bastard, I was expecting something a lot more brutal. I find it interesting that we as a culture can crank out an endless series of slasher movies and SAW films, movies that essentially use the torture and death of innocents as 90-minute long adrenaline pumps for the audiences, but that a 30-second waterboarding, a bunch of verbal abuse, and sticking some guy in a little wooden box is the filmmaking equivalent of dropping an atomic bomb on a puppy farm. 24 seemed to have more torture in it during any given episode than this whole movie, And while 24 aired everyone said they found it horrible and isn't it complex to play on our emotions that way, we're still to this day fist-pumping at the thought of Jack Bauer popping some Tangos in the brainpan with his H&K USP Compact, calling him the ultimate anti-terror badass, and so forth. And if your response is "Well, 24  was an awful show that glorified torture and I hated it", bully for you, but it went on for eight seasons. Clearly, this is a staggeringly complex issue, and there is no right answer. All I will say is that the torture scenes in Zero Dark Thirty could have been much more brutal and intense, and I think they were handled to my satisfaction, whatever their ultimate message might have been.

Now, for the rest of the film. Overall, I thought this was a very well-crafted movie. Kathryn Bigelow is an excellent director, pretty much unique in her status as a female film-maker who operates almost exclusively in the "men's genres". I've admired her work since back in the 80's with the gritty vampire thriller Near Dark, and I think she's only gotten better with each succeeding film. ZDT uses a very "documentarian" shooting style, with minmal camera movement and a very voyeuristic feel to the cinematography that makes it easy to fall into the emotional belief that you're actually watching the reality of the events unfolding, rather than a dramatization. There's very little music in the film, and what little there is comes up only in moments of transition or unspoken tension. Coupled with a very powerful sound design, I think this only serves to draw you even further into the film, and again, it's one of the reasons this film should be seen in the theater. There are a couple of moments where things blow up, and the physical vibrations of the sound hitting me were shocking enough for me to jump in my seat. The gunfire, especially in one early sequence, was extremely well-done, relying on the blast and overpressure of the gun's report rather than the "bang", something hard to explain unless you compare, say, gunfire sounds from the 70's or 80's to the gunfire in this film. Again, it works towards making the viewing experience feel less like a movie and more like a documentary. You're not going to get that at home, but I think the intent was to drive home that intensity to the viewer in a very visceral way, and I think it succeeded.

Another area where I think the film-makers were very smart was in casting. There are no major stars in this film, and the two actors I immediately recognized - James Gandolfini from The Sopranos and John Barrowman from Doctor Who  and Torchwood - have very small parts. This film is not a personality vehicle for some A-list celeb to grab an Oscar for Best Actor/Actress, but I still felt all the parts were handled very well, even when we don't really like the characters. For me, I found Maya, the film's main character, to be overly abrasive and kind of irritating (although not as annoying as Claire Danes' character on Homeland, since that'd be virtually impossible), but I think her off-putting demeanor was intentional. As it is mentioned near the end of the film, Maya has spent her entire CIA career doing nothing but hunting down Bin Laden, so it is natural that she's got a fanatic's aggressiveness, while everyone else is warning her about burnout and irreparable damage to her career.

Finally, the raid itself was very intense. I can only imagine the trainwreck it would have been if this film was handled by a bozo such as Michael Bay, with slo-mo scream moments filled with autofire and 'splosions everywhere, I can picture Osama being killed at the climax of the film only after the SEALs took on and defeated several "mini-bosses", the terrorist leader dying as his body is riddled with bullets while silhouetted by flames, as one of the operators sneers "You lose, Osama...". There is none of that, and yet I found it a very tense, disturbing sequence, almost too real to be comfortable, but I think the discomfort I felt was a good thing. Reading accounts of the raid, it surely had some violent moments, but it wasn't some Chuck Norris-esque bullet-fest, and I'm infinitely relieved the film-makers didn't treat it as such.

To conclude, I think Zero Dark Thirty is well worth a look, but I think, sadly, this movie's merits as a spy/military thriller will be completely overshadowed by the controversy surrounding one small part of the film, no matter how important that part might be. It will be interesting to look back on this film in ten years' time and see if the film can escape from this controversy, or be buried by it.

Coming in 2013, COMMANDO: Operation Bedlam

France, July 1941

The French resistance leader Andre Bouchard, the "Butcher of Calais", has finally been captured by the SS colonel Johann Faust. The famed Nazi partisan hunter is determined to break the will of his captive and tear apart Bouchard's fledgling network of freedom fighters. Despite the Frenchman's determination to give Faust nothing, each man knows it is only a matter of time before the SS will have what it needs to eradicate the last of the resistance.

However, all is not lost. Word of Bouchard's capture has reached the British government, and the decision is made to launch a desperate rescue mission before Faust succeeds in his plan. Once again, Corporal Thomas Lynch of His Majesty's No. 3 Commando is being sent with the rest of his squad to rendezvous with the few surviving partisans and either free Bouchard from his imprisonment in Calais...or make sure he's silenced forever.

The Commandos know this is all but a suicide mission, slipping into the heart of an occupied city to snatch one man from the clutches of a crack unit of SS. But the fate of the French resistance movement, and with it the success of any Allied invasion of France, hangs in the balance. With Thompsons and Lee-Enfields, Sten guns and grenades, knives and knuckle dusters, the men of 3 Commando will do whatever it takes to see the mission through.

Book Review: The Sten Machine Carbine

The most amusing thing about writing military and violent fiction is, to be honest, the Amazon referrals you start to get when you're buying books for research purposes. I've been buying a bunch of materials about World War Two and the British Commandos, as well s various aspects of the war. I came across this little pamphlet on the Sten, and picked it up on a lark. As soon as I clicked to buy it, Amazon started recommending all sorts of do-it-yourself gun manufacturing guides, as well as old standbys like The Anarchist's Cookbook and other anti-establishment texts.

The Sten "machine carbine" as it was called, although we would call it a submachine gun, is an extremely simple weapon. There's only forty some-odd parts, and all of them could be manufactured with the equipment found in any semi-professional metal-working shop. If over a million Stens could be manufactured in a couple of years in cottage smithies all over England, making one using the machines found in even a modest shop today would be trivial. Because of this, blueprints and design specifications for the weapon are commonly found among militant "off-the-grid"-ers and the like.

Interestingly enough, because of this, when I was writing Killer Instincts, originally William was going to train and use a black-market Sten, manufactured by some anonymous underground gunsmithing shop and sold to Richard and other clients, who were looking for untraceable automatic weapons. There were a couple of pages where Richard talks to William about illegal arms manufacturing, and the world of "gun runners" who traffic in untraceable weapons. At the time, I thought it would be an interesting way to start introducing William to the "shadow world" that Richard lived in. However, I decided that while this was interesting, I'd rather use a weapon more iconic for the action-adventure genre, which is why I switched to using an Uzi. There's still some of the black market aspect of the story when they talk about the weapon suppressors, but it's not quite as extensive.

Anyhow, back to the Sten Machine Carbine. This handy little pamphlet is a reproduction of a vintage British military manual on the weapon, and shows each of the weapon's parts in fair detail, as well as explaining precisely how to field strip and even totally disassemble the Sten into each of its constituent parts. It is one thing to be able to guess at the process, and another to know exactly how it is done. For example, the tubular stock of the Sten can be removed so the weapon can be stowed in a satchel or other small area, but I was never sure exactly how it was done, or if it was a quick process or if it required a tool. Thanks to this booklet, I know just how it would be done.

The booklet also goes into details such as "official" positions and stances to use when firing the weapon, as well as immediate action drills for clearing jams and so forth. Even if some of the stances or techniques are "dated", it is great information to know as it is how your characters have been trained, and how they would act in certain situations.

While most of the information here might be available in some form or another scattered across the internet, I think for a few bucks it is worth picking up if you have a serious interest in the mechanical workings of this famous weapon.

Book Review: Lightning War (The Furies #2) by John Steiner

The second of Steiner's Furies stories is just as good as the first, perhaps even better. While the first half of V for Vixens kept the reader guessing as to just what exactly was going on, Lightning War starts off strong with a bit of a "gotcha", and ends with an excellent action sequence.

In this second volume, The Furies take on a new member and at the same time, are assigned the task of eliminating a cell of German agents, all female, operating as intelligence gatherers in England. The first half of this story spends a good amount of time further developing the relationships between the Furies themselves (and that entails all sorts of relationships...), and I think Steiner does an excellent job of painting the women in vivid, but believable colors.

The second half of the story is the raid on the German cell. Talk about bloody, brutal, and cold - we can see these ladies are more than capable of dishing out violence in all forms, without pity or remorse. Steiner can certainly find his way around a gunfight, and I'm looking forward to more "Furious" action in the other books.

Book Review: V for Vixens by John Steiner

World War Two adventure fiction can be broken down, if at all, into two categories. The first is the "War Story", in which soldiers of some stripe or another go on missions and set about to shoot or blow up someone or something. Although these can of course be very well-crafted stories, filled with engaging characters and carefully constructed plots, they tend to be much more straightforward. I think Len Levinson's two WW2 series, The Sergeant and The Rat Bastards, fall into this category, as does my own WW2 Commando novel, Operation Arrowhead.

Then, you have the "Spy Story". I think this is actually the more popular of the two, especially since WW2 spy fiction evolves time-wise very easily into Cold War spy fiction and so on. The plots for these sorts of stories can be fairly straightforward, but they do tend towards the more complex, with double and triple agents, mysterious alliances and agendas, double-crosses and feints and counter-feints. This tends to also be the category that has a lot more sex (although to read The Sergeant, one would argue otherwise...) and definitely features more female characters.

With that last point in mind, taking a look at the first of John Steiner's The Furies series of WW2 spy stories, we come across what may be the first series of WW2 spy thrillers where the main protagonists are all women. In fact, they are a special, off-the-record-books section of female assassins and counter-agents who are ready to kill or be killed for Mother England.

I don't want to give away any of the major plot points, but suffice to say, Steiner has done an excellent job, both in crafting a very gritty, razor-sharp tale of ruthless violence and dedication, and in setting us up for further adventures later in the series. There are many instances in WW2 fiction, be it print or film, where the good guys get seduced and betrayed by some alluring Nazi femme fatale, and it's good to see Steiner work things so that the tables will now be turned on the bad guys. There is one scene, near the end of V for Vixens, that is such a shockingly titillating moment that I very nearly dropped my Kindle into my lap in order to clap out loud in congratulations to Steiner for pulling off something so perfect.

To conclude, if you have a hankering for some steamy, violent WW2 spy fiction, give John Steiner's books a try - I don't think you'll be disappointed.

Book Review: THE SHADOWERS by Donald Hamilton

I've had a pair of Matt Helm thrillers on my pulp paperback bookshelf for several years now, but I never too the time to give them a read. For one, both of the books are fairly well worn, and I always get nervous reading paperbacks that are too brittle or stiff for fear of damaging them. Of course, if that's the case, they're just taking up space, right? Sooner or later you have to take the chance and give it a delicately-handled read.

After James Reasoner, in his blog review of my novel Killer Instincts, compared my main character in some ways to the earlier Helm adventures, my curiosity was definitely stirred. So, having some free time recently, I grabbed the earlier of the two books, THE SHADOWERS, and gave it a read over the course of two evenings.

Boy, am I glad I did.

THE SHADOWERS is the seventh of the Matt Helm stories written by Donald Hamilton. The main character is a "counter-agent" for an unnamed, shadowy branch of the US government, tasked with finding and eliminating or neutralizing enemy spies. In this book, Helm returns to work after a tragic accident ends the life of his current occasional love interest. He's assigned the task of guarding a female scientist from a possible assassin, and in order to do so, Helm will have to "fall in love" with her and get married, since it is unknown how long this bodyguard duty will last. The nonchalant manner in which Helm agrees to this romantic charade - even when he is informed that they will legally become wedded to each other - speaks volumes to the character's total commitment to his profession. I won't give away any spoilers, but let us just say that the insights this book gives us into the mind of Matt Helm, secret agent, are very revealing.

Overall, I found THE SHADOWERS to be an excellent read. Hamilton's use of the first-person perspective works perfectly because the book is so character-centric. We are subsumed into Helm's consciousness, dunked headfirst into the cold, hard, brutal world of Cold War-era espionage. Helm is a man of ruthless violence, who will do anything and commit to it wholeheartedly if it will see the job done. He is cruel, he is calculating, and he is without scruples. That he is ultimately human, with a human being's feelings and regrets, is something that we are shown because we have the unique perspective of living in Helm's head with him during his assignment, but to the outside world, he is little more than a clockwork machine controlled by the toymakers in Washington.

Although out of print for a long while now, it appears that most of the Helm books can be found online for a reasonable price through Amazon or other booksellers. I've also seen a report that they'll be reprinted starting sometime next year. If you can get your hands on them, I definitely recommend doing so. I've just ordered the first novel in the series, DEATH OF A CITIZEN, and hope to pick up more as time goes on.