Publisher's Weekly Review
Following The Keeper's Son, this is the second in Hickam's superb series about the WWII adventures of U.S. Coast Guard Cmdr. Josh Thurlow and his daffy crew of coastal North Carolina misfits. In 1943, Josh and his men are fighting the Japanese around the Solomon Islands in the South Pacific. Josh, tough as a boiled owl, likes to carry an Aleut ax and drink Mount Gay rum. Still, when he's assigned a curious secret mission, he's not sure he's up for it. A Marine lieutenant, David Armistead, a cousin of President Roosevelt and Josh's friend, has deserted, and Josh is ordered to find him and bring him back for court-martial, or kill him. Josh teams up with another disgraced officer, U.S. Navy Lt. John Fitzgerald Kennedy, who is awaiting his own court-martial for losing his boat, PT-109. Josh and JFK are an interesting pair-the one a rough cob, the other a Harvard blueblood-and together they get themselves into loads of trouble with Japanese soldiers, gangs of cannibals, a beautiful native girl who chops off heads and a nutty cargo cult leader. Add fierce, bloody battles and steamy tropical island romance, as well as hilarious cameos by Richard Nixon as an enterprising supply officer and James Michener as a navy historian, and the result is a funny, tightly wrapped tale of wartime action. Agents, Frank Weimann and Mickey Freiberg. 6-city author tour. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
In The Keeper's Son (2003), Hickam introduced a character he intends to make recurrent, Coast Guard Lt. Josh Thurlow, who, in that first novel, worked to keep merchant ships off the North Carolina coast safe from German U-boats during World War II. Now, in the second installment of the series, we find Lt. Thurlow stationed in the Solomon Islands in the South Pacific, placed there by the secretary of the navy himself, to inspect navy operations as the forces of imperial Japan are to be at least kept in check and hopefully put into retreat. A certain crisis develops, however, when a lieutenant apparently deserts, and the lieutenant happens to be an ambassador's son. To help with his pursuit of the missing officer, Thurlow enlists the aid of a PT-boat commander, John F. Kennedy. Now we are off and running on a very exciting high-seas, wartime adventure tale, which combines the color, humanity, and humor of the play and movie South Pacific and the TV series Black Sheep Squadron. Characters, including JFK, are created with sympathy and nuance, and Hickam demonstrates a great understanding of both the remoteness and the strategic importance of this corner of the world. The first novel in the series was popular, as this one will prove to be. --Brad Hooper Copyright 2005 Booklist