espionage – The PolyBlog

Two O’Clock, Eastern Wartime by John Dunning (2001) – BR00176 (2020) – 🐸🐸🐸🐸⚪

January 12 2020

Plot or Premise

The year is 1942, and Jack Delaney is working as a writer for the local radio station where weird things happen, like actors going missing and potential German spies hiding in plain sight.

What I Liked

The story starts off confused, and a hint of someone in trouble. Delaney has to escape a chain gang to help a woman he loves, even if she is already spoken for in his mind. And the trail leads to a radio station in a coastal town where he gets work. At that point, the story is three-fold — a mystery involving German spies, a love story of sorts, and him learning about the radio business as a writer. The radio business part is awesome.

What I Didn’t Like

The German mystery is confused and the love story doubly so. Most of it makes very little sense and is more “hinted at” than “made real”.

The Bottom Line

Fantastic view of a wartime radio drama.

By the Rivers of Babylon by Nelson DeMille (1978) – BR00014 (2001) – 🐸🐸🐸🐸🐸

February 18 2001

Peace in the Middle East is almost assured and two concordes fly to New York with delegates for final negotiations. Terrorists try to derail the peace conference by planting bombs on board and taking the passengers hostage. After one plane is destroyed, killing all on board, the second plane is forced to land near Babylon. At the last minute, the hostages manage to escape to the top of a small hill from which they attempt to defend against the terrorists through several days of sorties, knowing that the military probably doesn’t know where they are and therefore can’t swoop in and rescue them.

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The Eleventh Commandment by Jeffrey Archer (1998) – BR00057 (1999) – 🐸🐸🐸⚪⚪

June 5 1999

Connor Fitzgerald is an assassin for the CIA. Black ops at its best. But when the CIA director orders a hit, and then wants to hide her involvement from the President, she tries to send Fitzgerald on an one-way futile assignment to Russia to prepare an assassination of the Russian Premier. Fitzgerald’s ex-mentor gets involved and figures out the plan, but too late to save CF from getting caught. A couple of twists later, however, and Fitzgerald is back in the States with the same mission — kill the Premier while he sits next to the President.