Convoy

Rating:
Summary: Gripping WWII thriller
Review: Captures the frustration and uncertainty of preventing U-boat attacks on unarmed merchant ships. Some well-rounded characters, and a good twist for getting a U-boat past the protecting warships.

Rating:
Summary: U-boat Inside Convoy and only one man can stop it!
Review: Dudley Pope is most famous for his non-fiction history and his Hornblowerian Ramage series. In Convoy, he turns his hand to WWII and the Battle of the Atlantic.

The novel's protagonist, while recovering from a serious wound, is charged with finding out how German submarines are getting inside Allied convoys. Convoy reads like a detective novel as our hero goes through all the evidence until he comes up with a hypothesis. He then must go to sea with convoy to test his hypothesis. The action then builds to a thundering climax.

I had a few problems with this novel which keep me from giving it top marks. First, I don't believe that the Germans were conducting air raids with anywhere near the intensity implied in late 1942. Second, the climax is unrealistic and more appropriate to a Hollywood movie than real life action. In most ways, Convoy seems to be realistic and a tribute to the men who fought the Battle of the Atlantic. The conclusion is far fetched.

Convoy lacks the true to life feel of The Cruel Sea or the intensity of H.M.S. Ulysses, but it is still a good read.