Available:*
Library | Call Number | Status |
|---|---|---|
Searching... Monmouth Public Library | Fic Skimin, R. 1992 | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Independence Public Library | FICTION - SKIMIN (AVIATION) | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Author Notes
Ferdie Pacheco was born in Tampa, Florida on December 8, 1927. He received a bachelor's degree in pharmacy from the University of Florida and a medical degree from the University of Miami. He worked as a general practitioner and often treated poor patients for nothing or a nominal charge.
In the early 1960s, his love of boxing drew him to the 5th Street Gym in Miami Beach, where Muhammad Ali, then known as Cassius Clay, was among the young fighters honing their skills under the trainer Angelo Dundee. Pacheco became Ali's fight doctor as he rose in the pro ranks and remained with him during most of his reign as the heavyweight champion. Pacheco later became a ringside television analyst.
Pacheco wrote several books including Fight Doctor, Muhammad Ali: A View from the Corner, Ybor City Chronicles, and Tales From the 5th Street Gym. He died on November 16, 2017 at the age of 89.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (3)
School Library Journal Review
YA-- This novel adds light touches of history and geography to an actual event, giving it a unique flavor. The story revolves around two enemy fighter pilots during World War II, Italian Franco Adamo and American Josh Rawlings. Adamo, pretending to be a friendly Bostonian in his captured American plane, offers to help escort the wounded bomber Rawlings is piloting. Rawlings's feelings of gratitude quickly turn to hate and his thoughts to revenge when Adamo not only shoots down the plane, but kills nearly all the survivors. The emotions ring true and deep. Mafia and Sicilian politics thrown into the mix of love triangles and war make this novel hard to put down. After the first few pages, the book takes off and accelerates ever faster as the plot progresses. There is a giant leap from the end of the book to the epilogue; readers must fill in a vast time span that stretches reality a bit as all the hates, loves, and other emotions twist into completely new formations without any explanation. Outside of that two-page fault, the novel generates interest and is hard to put down.-- Bunni Union, Geauga West Library, OH (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
A straight-arrow midwestern flyer and a rising mafioso team up to clip the wings of a murderous Italian ace who terrorizes the skies over WW II Sicily. Co-writers Pacheco (the nonfiction Fight Doctor, 1977) and Skimin (Gray Victory, 1988; Chikara!, 1984) based the story on a real incident. Bad things have been happening to Africa-based bombers on their way back from raids over Europe: injured stragglers are mysteriously disappearing. Young Captain Josh Rawlins discovers the reason when his own limping B-17 is joined by an American Lightning fighter that turns from apparent friend to murderous foe, shooting down the bomber and then strafing all the survivors except Josh. The wolf in sheep's clothing is Franco Adamo, an Italian who spent his formative years in Boston and who now uses his flawless Yankee slang and captured airplane to lure innocent flight crews to their death. Vowing revenge for the murder of his pals, Rawlins goes AWOL and stows away on the plane inserting OSS agent Maj. Rudy ``Lotions'' Sabatini into Sicily. Peacetime mafia consiglière Sabatini has orders to find and eliminate Adamo, who is actually the son of an enemy of Sabatini's old boss Vito Genovese. Sabatini and Rawlins chase Adamo from Sicily to Sardinia to Cairo, where Adamo's gorgeous Jewish-Italian archaeologist wife whiles away the war looking for Mrs. Tutankhamen. Guess who Rawlins falls for. There's not a tongue anywhere in cheek in this thin, Indiana Jones adventure. Too bad.
Booklist Review
A P-38 Lightning captured during World War II by an Italian air force pilot was then deceptively used to shoot down straggling Allied aircraft. Skimin and Pacheco have taken this bit of history and contrived a novel of oscillating quality that focuses on the vendetta of Captain Josh Rawlins, an American pilot whose crew was killed by Italian Major Franco Adamo, who's also unpopular with the Mafia, which killed his father. While Rawlins is concocting revenge with the aid of military intelligence (which happily happens to be working closely with local mafiosi), he takes a trip to Egypt where Adamo's wife is working as an archaeologist. Rawlins is so smitten with the glamorous woman that he has difficulty enacting his plan, which is to paint her features on the side of his plane and taunt his enemy into a dogfight. If it wasn't based upon fact, the story could easily be deemed implausible, however entertaining. ~--Denise Perry Donavin