Victory and Honor

June 27, 2011
Diehard fans will best appreciate Griffin's slow-moving sixth Honor Bound novel, which picks up where The Honor of Spies (2009), also co-written with son Butterworth, left off in the spring of 1945. Lt. Col. Cletus Frade of the OSS, besides trying to prevent Nazis from fleeing to Argentina, is concerned with the survival of the soon-to-be-disbanded OSS and increasing tension with the U.S.S.R. The action-starved plot takes nearly 100 pages to get underway, and when it does, the drama is sporadic, choppy, and interrupted by lots of macho camaraderie. An intriguing subplot mentioned early onâa rogue Nazi U-boat that escaped Allied detection and is now chugging toward Japan with atomic secrets on boardâgoes nowhere. Frade, for his part, is his usual pushy, smart-alecky self and most likely destined to be a higher-up in the OSS's successor, the CIA. Techno-thriller fans will relish the detailed descriptions of weapons and aircraft.

This may be the last (and the least) of Griffin's Honor Bound WWII adventures featuring Cletus Frade and his cohorts in the Office of Strategic Services. But don't bet on it. Narrator Scott Brick has read every one of the Frade novels, and his reading is as well done as ever. The trouble is that, unlike the previous books, there's absolutely no action. Not even one shot is fired. Frade, a former Marine who has been drafted into the OSS, is sent to Argentina to conduct multiple clandestine operations against the Nazis. With the war at an end, Hitler dead, and the Allies rounding up as many Nazis as possible, Frade tries to smuggle two German officers who helped him into Argentina. Brick holds the story together, and his sardonic voice and mastery of accents are superb. Still, the listener wonders: Is this the end, or will Frade join the CIA, the OSS's successor, and fight the new enemy of the free world--Stalin? A.L.H. (c) AudioFile 2012, Portland, Maine