Coward at the Bridge (Dick Coward 2)
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Product Description
Trapped in a cupboard with a nubile blonde nymphomaniac; crossing the Waal under a hail of fire with the US paratroops of 82nd airborne; rattling in a jeep through the Dutch countryside with the men of 1st Airborne Recce Squadron; trying to take out a self-propelled gun with a ruddy useless PIAT. It's all in a day's work for Lt Dick Coward and Sgt Tom Price on their second published adventure. After the horrors of D-Day, they find themselves plunged into even greater chaos and mayhem as they land in the deceptively tranquil countryside around Arnhem, Holland, as part of Operation Market Garden. What should be a pushover - the ingenious scheme that everyone thinks will end the war by Christmas - turns into Britain's biggest military disaster of the Second World War. But if it's a cock-up, by golly is it a glorious one. Rarely if ever have Allied soldiers acquitted themselves better than the British, Americans and Poles, as they fought against the might of the SS, in their bid to capture 'The Bridge Too Far." As usual Coward and Price are in the thick of it. They have to be. If Coward doesn't get a VC this time, he'll be booted off the family estate for good, and stand no chance of winning the heart of the fickle, dangerously beguiling Gina. Will he get the medal? Will he get the girl? Will Price be driven so mad by his master's Bertie Wooster-like stupidity that he ends up throttling him first?
About the Author
James Delingpole is a journalist, broadcaster and author of six books including How To Be Right, Thinly Disguised Autobiography, and the Dick Coward series. He writes for the Daily and Sunday Telegraph, the Daily Mail, the Mail On Sunday, the Sunday Times, The Times, the Independent On Sunday on everything from rock to culture to politics and gardening. He is married with children and lives in South London.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Great fun,
By Tweedy (Scotland, UK) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Coward at the Bridge (Dick Coward 2) (Hardcover)
James Delingpole has really delivered here. At a time where there are a few WW2 books about (James Holland and Michael Asher etc) this one really stands out, perhaps it's only weakness being an insipid cover.
The author really tugs the emotions here, spreading wit and pathos in equal measure with some very entertaining characterisation. This is a real romp from start to finish and highly recommended.
7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Most Fantastic Read Imaginable,
By J. Jackson (New Zealand) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Coward at the Bridge (Dick Coward 2) (Hardcover)
"Coward at the Bridge" is the second novel in James Delingpole's Dick Coward Adventure Series. It's set amid the mayhem of Operation Market Garden with Dick Coward and Price, as usual, in the thick of the action. And if you're after a brilliantly authentic war novel - or just a brilliant read generally - you can't do better than buy yourself a copy. It is enthralling, pacy, pitch-perfect in its historical realism and written in the elegant, vigorous prose style of a master: fact and fiction, drama and adventure are all superbly balanced. It is also extremely funny (I laughed aloud sufficiently often over this book that it was necessary to sit in a room on my own to read it) and frequently moving.
Because the market is saturated with books about the Second World War, most indistinguishable from the next, Coward at the Bridge should come with a warning: nothing else in the genre is close to being this good. As a storyteller and craftsman, James Delingpole is in a league of his own. He keeps you glued to the very last page when, exhausted and elated, you can at last put the book down and get yourself some sleep.
6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Much better than '...on the beach',
By
This review is from: Coward at the Bridge (Dick Coward 2) (Hardcover)
I'm a big fan of Flashman and a great reader of WW2 fiction (although strangely as a genre there isn't that much of it) but picked up 'Coward on the beach' with a bit of trepidation. The idea that Dick Coward has to win a VC to inherit his fathers estate and ends up flying Spits in the Battle of Britain, fighting under cover with the Germans at Stalingrad, escaping from the Japanese in Burma etc is dangerously close to farcical. Flashman worked by being very, very plausible and I had the nasty feeling that 'Coward' would fall flat because it just wasn't plausible. However I was pleasantly suprised... it worked. Just. So I bought book two.
This is much, much better. Cowards character has developed nicely, the rather over-done Price plays a back seat and nothing James Delingpole could make up could be more farcical than General Brownings decisions during Market Garden (such as using 38 precious gliders to fly his HQ into Holland and having the Poles dropped South of Arnhem bridge while their vehicles and heavy weapons were dropped north of the river!). As with Flashy Coward manages to be in the thick of just about every battle of the campaign but how he moves between them is believable and the story doesn't depend on inplausible coincidences. In format 'Coward at the Bridge' is more like Flashman than the first book with some very good historical notes at the back and an extremely useful bibliography which I'm going to use to chase up some further reading. As with Flashman you'll probably appreciate this book more if you appreciate the real events, although Wikipedia and the movie 'A bridge too far' are all you'll need. Any comedy in this book is very very black humour. The author (doubtless as a result of some pretty impressive research and reading) describes some very nasty aspects of battle in graphic detail. He's also got respect for the other side. There are no pantomime nazi's and no overdone 'lets kill the evil hun' elements. In this book Germans burn to death exactly the same as Brits do. The achievements of the Americans & Poles are well covered and the failures of the Brits put into proper context. Although fiction, and very good fiction at that you'll finish the book knowing a lot more about 'Market Garden' than when you started it. The author has a bit of an uphill struggle writing a third book though. George McDonald Frazer wisely started Flashman at the beginning of his career. With Dick Coward its Oct 1944 and we're only onto book 2. Going back in time to Dunkirk, Stalingrad & Burma will be perfectly possible but we'll be reading his earlier adventures knowing how they work out for him in 1944. However on the strength of this book I'll be buying the next one regardless.
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