The Better Part of Valor

by Basil Heatter

This is the sage of the men who manned the PT boats in the dark early days of the war with the Japanese. And it is the story of an odd triangle: Mark Hammond, a war correspondent; Wynn Savage, an insanely, compulsively brave PT boat officer; and Lud, the lovely girl who married Savage-out of pity-and then fell in love with Hammond.

Paperback

Published January 1, 1964

About the author

Basil Heatter, the son of radio commentator Gabriel Heatter, was born on Long Island on March 26, 1918. He attended schools in Connecticut, then went abroad when was 16 for a two year travel stint through Europe. Returning to America, he went to work for a New York advertising agency. He enlisted in the Navy in 1940 and during WWII served as a skipper on a P.T. boat in the Southwest Pacific. Besides being a news commentator himself, Heatter wrote twenty novels of intrigue and adventure—beginning with "The Dim View" in 1946, the story of a young PT boat skipper—as well as several non-fiction works revolving around his love of the sea. In fact, he lived for years off Key West on his own self-built sailboat, The Blue Duck. He passed away June 12, 2009, in Miami, Florida