As with Sharpe's Christmas, Sharpe's skirmish was never meant to be sold.It was intended to be given for free with hardback copies of Sharpe'sFortress. Bernard Cornwell has since rewritten it. Its expensive but allprofits are split between "the sharpe appreciation society"- a historicalorganisation that studies Napoleonic battlefields & "the Bernard & JudyCornwell Foundation"- a childrens charity based in Cape Cod (Cornwell'snew home).
The story itself is typical Sharpe- a tiny number of British troopscleverly decimate huge quantitites of French. It makes constant referenceto other books, most notably Sharpe's Fortress & so fits in nicely withthe series. I wouldn't recommend it to any but the most diehard Sharpefan, but I liked it.
Anyone complaining about "being ripped off" would be advised to checktheir purchases more carefully. Amazon clearly state it is only 64 pageslong & as the profits go to charity Bernard Corwell is not "robbing"anyone.

Both of these stories were originally written for & published by the DailyMail. They were intended to be 12,000 words long (exactly!) & werepublished in the Christmas editions of the paper to pad out the rathersparse holiday editions. Bernard Cornwell writes a very amusing intro tothe book describing this process. He's since rewritten both stories &padded them out with a little more detail. Both stories aim to have someChristmas spirit, but as Mr. Cornwell says "Sharpe isn't well known forwishing peace & goodwill to his fellow man"..quite the opposite infact!
The first story "Sharpes Christmas" is set in the Pyrenees during thewinter of 1813 & fits in just after the events of "Sharpes Regiment".Sharpe is tasked with stopping a French garrison escape from Spain throughthe mountains. The garrison is lead by Colonel Guidon (from SharpesTiger), a man described by Sharpe as "the best officer he ever met". Its astandard "Sharpe easily defeating massed columns of French" story but theconclusion is quite suprising & unusually touching (at least by Sharpestandards!)
The second story "Sharpes Ransom" is set in Normandy after Waterloo.Sharpe is trying to settle down with his new woman, Lucille & son, but thelocal villagers are unhappy about "an englishman" living with them. WhenLucille is kidnapped Sharpe has to win over the locals....fast. Many ofthe events described refer directly to "Sharpe's revenge". If you haven'tread it for a while a refresher is recommended. I enjoyed thepost-Waterloo Sharpe & personally I think there's more opportunity for afull novel here than in the rather contrived "Sharpes Waterloo".
Both stories are short & can be read in an hour or two. This makes itquite an expensive buy, but all profits from the book are split between"the Sharpe Appreciation society" & "the Bernard & Judy CornwellFoundation"- a charity for youngsters based in Cornwells adopted home onCape Cod. If you're not a die-hard Sharpe fan you may not fully appreciateit, but its a nice addition to the collection.

Chronologically "Hammer heads" fits in between "Flight of the Old Dog" &"Day of the Cheetah" & is set in the early 90's when Columbian drugflights were reaching epidemic proportions. Brown's solution is to combinecustoms & coastguards & equips them with hi-tech drones & armed tilt-rotorplanes to intercept the drug flights. Obviously this would be a bit onesided so the "bad guy", renegade Cuban Colonel Augusto Salazaar needs tohave MIGs & Mirages to escort his drug flights with.
Compared to Brown's earlier books this is quite poor. The transition fromwriting about major global wars to, in effect law enforcement is uneasy.Brown's very right wing politics are clear- he leaves no doubt that hewould happily shoot down drug flights. He uses all his earlier characters(Gen. Elliot, MacLachlan & JC Powell) & introduces some new ones.Unfortunately the new characters, especially Admiral Harcastle areunlikeable & one dimensional. Salazaar is virtually a pantomime SouthAmerican villian & is indisguishable from Henri Cazeux (the bad guy is"Storming Heaven") or several of Brown's other "bad guys".
The story relies too much on describing hi-tech drones & not enough on thehuman aspects of the story. At one point nearly 50 custom's men & womenare murdered. Harcastle's response is pretty much " Damn that Cuban...letsget stealth fighters, drones & helicopters & attack Haiti without anygovernment authorisation". There's then no more mention of what in reallife would be a terrible catastrophe for the customs service.
Sadly this book marks a decline in Brown's writing. His earlier works(Flight of the old Dog etc.) are superb, but this is a techno-thrillerwith very little thriller & too much "techno".

The Nottingham based, sandwich eating, part-Polish Inspector Charlie Resnick is easily the best detective in modern British literature.

Resnick is different to the sharp-suited detectives & the "not playing by the book" rebels normally seen in crime fiction. Most of DI Rebus's arrests would be thrown out of court for procedural irregularities. Even Inspector Morse would be useless in real life.... not so Charlie Rebus. Rather than brilliant logical leaps Resnick solves the crimes by hard work, interviewing suspects & following up leads from informants. At heart the crimes he solves are pointless nasty & brutish & the crimals either nasty & brutish or commited by "normal" people in moment of panic. The cases built against them are watertight. The books are gripping, not because they play a great detective against a master criminal, but because of the superb characterisation & descriptive skill of the author.

Much of the strength of the books come from the reality. You can walk the streets of Nottingham and find all the locations described in each story. All the locations described by Harvey exist, from the huge Victorian Villa's of the Park estate (in the shadow of Nottingham castle) to the graffiti & desolation of Hyson Green & the broken pavement outside the Polish Club on Sherwood Rise. The crimes investigated by Resnick really do happen on a day to day basis. In “Still water” several young women are found strangled & dumped in the city's canal. The cases are passed to the newly formed serious crime squad, but Resnick becomes involved when his partner, Hannah reveals that she knew the latest victim....and her abusive husband. Resnick investigates and get nowhere...until he receives a chance bit of information from a taxi driver who knew the victim.

It’s a crime that these books aren’t more widely read. Fans of Ian Rankin’s Rebus series would be especially advised to try John Harvey.

I first read this as a kid & loved it. 14 years later it still seems pretty good, if a touch dated. "Flight of the Old Dog" compares very favourably with Tom Clancy's better (& older) books. It shares some plot with "Cardinal of the Kremlin" and is very much of Reagan's "empire of evil" era.

The plot is fairly simple- the Soviets develop a very powerful laser on the Kamkatcha peninsula (very close to where in real life Korean airlines flight KAL007 was shot down) & use it to destroy america's "Star Wars" weapons platform. The US send bombers to destroy the site, but everything goes wrong leaving the "old dog" (a heavily up-armed & stealthy version of the 50 year old B-52 stratofortress) and her rag-tag crew of test-pilots & civilian contractors as the only force that can stop the Soviets from zapping every plane & satellite the US launches.

This book introduces Patrick MacLanahan & the "dreamland" complex in Nevada, both of which will be horribly overused by Dale Brown over the past 15 year. In this book at least the novelty of the high-tech weapons still feels fresh & interesting & despite it many advantages the old dog is still vunerable & dependent on the skill of its crew.

This certainly deserves 4-5 stars. If you like it try Harold Coyle's "Team Yankee" or Clancy's "Red storm rising". Both are Cold War classics and far superior to Brown's recent tepid efforts.

One reviewer says that this book is as good as Derek Robinson's "piece of cake"... he wrong, its far, far better. Comparing it to other author's works is hard- the best I can say is that it combines the tensions & sheer horror of "Birdsong" with the romance & tragedy of "Captain Correlli's Mandolin".

I read this one sunny afternoon sitting in my parents garden 30 miles north of RAF Duxford (home of the Imperial War museums historical aircraft collection). The sights, sounds & smells of wartime rural england are so intense that the sounds of 60 year old piston engines gradually approaching didn't seem unusual at all. It was only when a REAL B-17 ("Sally B" europes only airworthy example, not Misbehavin' Martha) roared overhead that I remembered it was 2003 not 1943.

The book is unusual in that it doesn't have a "main" character. Instead it concentrates on the lives of many people living on & around a typical USAAF airbase in the east of england. This technique has been used many times by many authors but rarely does it work quite this well. The fact that its a "first book" makes it even more of an achievement.

The whole book is superb but the ending is incredibly moving... this book is one of the greatest works of war fiction ever. Radcliffe is every bit the equal of Sebastian Faulks or Louis de'Bernierre and thats rare praise indeed. BUY THIS BOOK!

This book would be a fairly average terrorist based techno-thriller if it wasn't for 2 points:

The first is that the author is an extremely experienced military & civil pilot. The two plane crashes described at the start of the book are stomach churning. If you've seen the crashes in movies such as "final destination" or "Alive" you'll know what to expect. Its rare that an author can describe a moment of such terror quite so well.

The second feature is a slightly frightening comment on page 487. "So what's next? Are we going to get a 747 impacting the world trade centre in New York because the two pilots were taken out leaving Kennedy?". This book was published 12 months before 9/11.

Plotwise the book rattles along very nicely. FBI agent Kat Bronsky has more to her than many fictional hero's. The fact that she's female makes a welcome change. She's a cross between James Bond & Clarice Starling. A little more mortality would be nice- surviving one near death encounter is exciting... surviving ten gets tedious.

This book and many of Nance's others deserve 4 stars. (5 should be reserved for works of genius). As far as holiday thrillers/ techno thrillers go he's one of the best.... just don't read this while waiting for a plane- you won't get on board!

When I started this book I couldn't read it fast enough, but two days later I really wanted to finish it. It starts extremely well with a body found in a bomb-site. The atmosphere is very intense- the description of war torn London is highly convincing. The main character Sgt. Troy seems like a great literature detective, almost like a 1940's Resnick, but very rapidly the book starts to lose its way.

Troy quickly identifies the murderer (despite his deductions being based on very flimsy evidence). Unfortunately (for the plot) the murderer is protected by friends in high places and the story starts to turn into a rather unoriginal conspiracy thriller with "shady high ranking government officials trying to silence the one honest cop".

For no good reason Troy hops into bed with several of the main charcters. This did not improve matters... his description & personality don't make him terribly likeable & he certainly doesn't seem to be a lady's man. These liason's only serve to compromise him & make his case harder.

In the course of the book he's blown up twice, shot at least twice, hit with an axe & beaten into a coma. Such "drama" adds to the unreality & diminishes what could have been a great detective story. If Alan Furst suffers from a lack of plot & drama this book is the other extreme.

This book could have easily been a classic. Instead its only just above average. I've just this minute bought "old flames" (used from amazon marketplace) & hope its a bit better edited. "Black out" would have been improved by striking out about 100 pages.

My biggest criticism of this book is the title. Without giving TOO much away: November the 11th is approaching. Someone in London keeps planting bombs with the intention of causing massive carnage. The books is called "remembrance day". Can you think of a situation where many people are packed together with memebers of the government & royal family in attendance? It doesn't take a genius to work it out & it does slightly spoil things.

That said the characterisation is pretty good for this kind of thriller. Its more James Bond than Le Carre, but there's nothing wrong with that. The details of the bombs & the mentality of the bomber is very interesting, especially when it appears that the bombs used in the recent Madrid atrocities (11th March '04 ) used several methods described in this book. This gives the book added impact in the same way that Tom Clancy's then outlandish idea of using an airliner as a weapon (Debt of Honour) now seems all too real.

As with most thrillers this is just a little too superficial to be considered a classic, but its certainly above average. I took this book away on holiday, enjoyed it & the left it in the hotel room for someone else to (hopefully) enjoy. People are far to quick to award 5 stars. My 3/5 rating is intended as a good, but not great rating for a good but not great story.

The author, John J. Nance is a commercial pilot which gives his books an authenticity that few techno-thriller writers achieve. That said this is hardly a "techno" thriller as the technology is at least 50 years old.

The story revolves around a private airborne firefighting company. The pilots use clapped-out 50 year old DC-6B airliners specially modified to drop fire retardent chemicals onto raging forest fires. The aircraft are kept in the air by little more than duck tape & luck and eventually the luck runs out....

The hero, pilot Clark Maxwell narrowly avoids piloting an aircraft that subsequently loses a wing 150 feet above a forest fire. Traumatised by this near miss with death he starts investigating why a plane that's just passed a flight safety test should suffer such a catastrophic failure. Naturally he encounters a shady government conspiracy & a web of corporate corruption.

That said the book is based on real events. I can remember watching footage of a C130 water bomber losing a wing while fighting fires in California last year. In that case flight documents had also been "creatively" updated.

There's few suprises in this book, but is is genuinely well written & has some very exciting bits (especially when Maxwell tries landing a burning aircraft with one engine hanging off the wing). The story is as good as Dale Brown's better books & makes great holiday reading.... although its probably better not read during the flight!