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.

Movie Review: The Desert Rats (1953)

Last night while browsing Nexflix for something to watch, I discovered that I'd tucked this old WW2 flick in my instant movie queue. About an hour and a half long, The Desert Rats tells the story of an Australian battalion under an English commander (played by Richard Burton) during the Siege of Tobruk.

Overall the film was pretty entertaining. There's an odd side plot involving Burton's character running into his old schoolmaster, who's now a drunk and a private in the Australian army. I agree with several reviewers of the film that this subplot is rather awkward and should have been re-written or cut out, but aside from this one quibble, the film is quite enjoyable. James Mason plays Rommel as if he's born to the role (and he was Rommel in The Desert Fox, the movie that preceded this one), and Burton is also quite good, as are the rogues gallery of Australian "desert rats" in the movie.

There are a number of action sequences, some of which were entirely shot for the film and some made up of new footage spliced together with war documentary footage, a common practice in these old war films. The middle third of the film is especially good, detailing all the night raids and missions carried out by the Rats against the Germans - blowing up supply dumps, knifing sentries, and causing general havoc within the German lines. I think the film also does a good job of showing the incredibly harsh conditions of the Tobruk defenders, men who're literally living in holes cut out of the hard desert earth for months on end.

If you get a chance, find this movie and check it out. If you're a classic war film buff, I don't think you'll be disappointed. Here's the trailer for the film:

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.

COMMANDO: Operation Arrowhead is Free for the Kindle Today

Just a heads-up that my WW2 action-adventure novel COMMANDO: Operation Arrowhead is free for the Kindle today via Amazon. I had some (relatively) decent sales last month, and this month is looking pretty solid as well. For comparison, I sold twice as many copies of COA in August as Killer Instincts managed in its first three months. The book is actually doing better in the UK than in the US, which I guess isn't all that surprising as it is about British Commandos, and from what I have seen digging around Amazon there is quite the market in the last couple of years in WW2-era war and adventure fiction. Hey, if there's a market trend out there, I'm happy to hop along for the ride.

So, if you were curious about the book but didn't want to invest the requisite cabbage, today's your chance to pick up the ebook for free.

Movie Review: Code of Silence (1985)

I wouldn't say I am a huge Chuck Norris fan, but there are a number of his movies I really enjoy, Delta Force, Missing in Action, Lone Wolf McQuade, and Invasion U.S.A. among them. However, there are a number of other Norris movies, what I consider "second shelf", which are still extremely watchable, and Code of Silence is one of them.

I'm always amused by what movie poster, if any, is used to represent an actor on their IMDb page; Jean Claude Van Damme uses a photo from Hard Target, and Chuck Norris' photo is from the poster for Code of Silence. I've no idea if the actors themselves picked those photos or if some fan just thought it was the best look, but Norris holding a heavily choked 12-gauge shotgun one-handed by its pistol grip is a pretty badass look if you ask me.

Plotwise, the movie isn't terribly complicated. Norris plays Eddie Cusack, a Chicago police sergeant on the tactical team who is going after your typical crime family. Turns out, however, that Cusack and company aren't the only ones; another criminal gang is gunning for them as well. To make matters worse, one of Cusack's subordinates is under suspicion of shooting an innocent teenage boy and planting a pistol on the kid. Cusack is a real straight man, almost a pariah already in his department for walking the straight and narrow too easily. When he speaks out against his fellow officer, the rest of the department shuns him, which isn't good when you're caught up in the middle of a gang war.

Overall, this is a pretty gritty, "realistic" movie. There's plenty of gunplay and martial arts action, car chases and explosions, but I don't consider this movie anywhere near as over-the-top as other Norris movies such as Invasion U.S.A.. Although the movie was made in 1985, it lacks the, for lack of a better term, "brightness" of a movie like Commando. Instead, CoS is a dark, gloomy movie, filled with overcast skies, dingy locations, lots of grimy brick and steel, and a cast of characters that definitely fall outside the usual range of pretty Hollywood faces. The movie looks and feels to me like it should be a decade older than it is, but I don't really consider that a bad thing. The one really oddball factor in this movie is the introduction of a "police robot", a remote-controlled / semi-autonomous wheeled combat system kitted with a frightening array of missiles and heavy machine guns. While this thing is over-armed even for a combat robot in Iraq in 2012, it is utterly ridiculous for Chicago in 1985. Oh, and it might as well have had "Chekhov's Gun" painted across its hull...just saying...

So if you've never caught Code of Silence, give it a try. I found it on my On Demand lineup, but your mileage may vary, of course. You could probably pick it up at Amazon for a song, and if you're a Norris fan, I think it's worth having.

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.

Short Story Review: The Killing Question by Mark Allen

As human beings, we sometimes - probably at least once in our lives - ask ourselves, in all seriousness, if we have what it takes to kill someone in cold blood. I'm not talking about killing a completely innocent person, but rather someone who we feel deserves it (whatever our definition of that might be), a killing in revenge or retribution or "moral outrage", rather than undisputed self-defense or just random mayhem.

Maybe the question comes in the form of the old "if you could travel back in time would you kill Hitler" mind-game, or maybe you see something horrible on the news and ask yourself if you'd pull the trigger on some serial rapist or mass murderer. If you're a bloody-minded person maybe you think about this more often than you'd like to admit. If you're a writer, especially a crime fiction author, you know you think about this a little too often...but hey, it's all in the name of crafting a good story, right?

This is the sort of question writer Mark Allen tackles in his short story, "The Killing Question". Private detective Jack Reece is offered one million dollars to track down the man who raped and brutalized a five year-old girl...and another four million dollars to kill the man once Reece finds him. At first Reece rejects the offer out of hand, but once he takes the million dollars to track down this loathsome scumbag, his mind begins to ponder if he has what it takes to pull the trigger and earn that extra money.

Although the story is relatively short, Allen writes a visceral, brutal tale about the seediest of underbellies, about the lowest scum of the earth and whether an honorable person could ever bring themselves to ending the lives of such terrible people. Allen's story is graphic and definitely not for the faint of heart or the queasy of stomach, but then again, that's probably how it should be. If vigilante violence were easy or pretty, the world would be an even bloodier place than it already is.