Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Too much 'history', not enough thrills...., 8 Jul 2007
Overloaded with historical facts which the author is deperate to shoehorn into the book, at the expense of story, plot, thrills etc. - plus the characterisation is paper-thin, and the whole thing feels amateurish and implausible... War of the Rats was much better.
For example, we get a group of Commandos in training in 1945, and apparently none of them have heard any of the most basic details of Heydrich's assassination in 1942! And so we get 7 pages of them rapt in attention as the book's 'hero' explains it all.
Again, when the assassin gets to Washington she is treated to a mini-lecture from a stranger about the realities of politics and politicians in Washington - this kind of thing happens throughout the book and it feels very clunky.
But despite the wish to utilise all possible historical facts, the author makes a basic mistake like twice calling the July 1944 assasination attempt on Hitler 'the bomb in the bunker'. And you don't need to be a historian to know that this happened in a ground-level building at Hitler's Rastenburg headquarters, not in a bunker, and certainly not in the Berlin bunker.
Try the author's 'War of the Rats', but avoid this one.
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2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Don't turn down a second chance, 25 Oct 2007
"... you had a gun on me twice, and both times you let me go. A girl gets to appreciate that sort of thing." - from THE ASSASSINS GALLERY
My first chance at THE ASSASSINS GALLERY was the initial thirty-six pages I finished on AMTRAK's Southwest Chief on the overnight leg from Los Angeles to Albuquerque, where I disembarked from the train and mistakenly left the book behind to continue on to Chicago all by itself. This was no small loss as I'd been hooked by what I'd read so far and thus had to purchase a second copy once I returned home. (I just hate it when that happens, don't you?)
In the opening chapter, a mysterious submarine surreptitiously drops off a passenger on an isolated stretch of the Massachusetts coast on January 1, 1945. The intruder, after skillfully but brutally killing two unlucky Civil Defense coast watchers, goes to the nearest town, obtains a car, and sets out for Washington, D.C. The mission: to kill the President of the United States.
One member of the Secret Service detail assigned to protect the Chief Executive is Agent Dag Nabbit, once on loan to, trained by, and operational with the British Special Operations Executive. (Dag Nabbit? Author David Robbins must be kidding. How about Holy Moses, Jumpin' Jehosephat, Gosh Darn, or my personal favorite, Oh S--T?) Nabbit, having come across the police report from Massachusetts concerning the double murder on the sands, suspects something sinister is afoot. So, he gets from the SOE the loan of his former instructor and historical expert on assassination techniques, Professor Mikhal Lammeck, to help with the investigation.
The author's previous works of fiction are centered on World War II. The first three skipped around the Eastern Front (Stalingrad, Berlin, Kursk), and the fourth takes place in Europe on the Western Front. THE ASSASSINS GALLERY also has the war as a backdrop, but at the distant vantage point of the U.S. capital. Here, the plot is ultimately keyed to an historical event, Franklin Roosevelt's death at Warm Springs, SC on April 12, 1945, ostensibly from a brain hemorrhage.
The promise of the first 36 pages held up; the volume teetered on the edge of being in the couldn't-put-it-down category until the end. The confrontation between the assassin and Lammeck at a full-dress reception at the Peruvian embassy was especially clever and worth the price of admission - paid twice as you recall. And the government payrolling the assassin was a nice twist. There were, however, irritations that caused me to lop off a star.
One of the biggest thorns in America's side in today's era of radical Islamic mischief is Iran (Persia). So, as if the author's publisher wanted David to make THE ASSASSINS GALLERY topical with current times, the unlikely villain of this piece is a Persian, Moslem assassin adept in the use of knife and poisons. What's more, her name is ... Judith. Okey-dokey. (Lucky we're not now in confrontation with Alaska; the Bad Gal would've been an Eskimo named Gladys with a harpoon.)
I also wasn't engaged by the main protagonist, Lammeck. Rather than coming off as heroic, he presented himself more as a whiner. And his relationship with former student Dag, rather than being congenial, was a continuing source of annoyance to both and to me. Actually, the most interesting and engaging character was Judith; she deserves her own series, something which Robbins makes possible, especially if she continues to stalk American politicians.
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by David L. Robbins
by David L. Robbins
by David L. Robbins
by John le Carré
by David L. Robbins
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