Convoy

May 1, 1987
In November 1942, Royal Navy Lieutenant Ned Yorke is recovering the use of his action-damaged left hand and falling in love with his nurse. Chafing at inactivity, Ned is called to Whitehall and the Anti-Submarine Intelligence Unit. Led by suave Captain Watts, ASIU is in the thick of the Battle of the Atlantic, where the Germans are sinking ships faster than the Allies can replace them. ASIU is especially worried by a new twist: lone Nazi subs are wreaking major havoc on Allied convoys from inside the convoys. Ned thinks he's found how the Germans manage this, but he must join a Freetown-bound convoy to spy on a supect neutral ship and, somehow, foil "the Insider.'' Pope (Decoy, etc.) has, as usual, given us fine wartime color at sea and in London, a keen depiction of the military bureaucracy, credible characters (including a regrettably brief appearance by Ned's mothersophisticated in ``a kind and practical way,'' calmly braving wartime London) and a lively plot.