I am a fan of much that James Barrington has done, his thriller series featuring Paul Richter is as good as any out there and with some great characters. I read and enjoyed the first Eddie Dawson book, but was underwhelmed by the second sadly. After a long gap we get a third book, and encouraged by reviews suggesting a slightly different approach, I decided to give it a try.
It is different, the non-stop chase stories from the first two are not in evidence. Instead the author takes an interesting bit of WW2 and puts his character into the mix. The facts are amazing, a small group of territorial engineers (the KFRE Kent Fortress Royal Engineers) went into Holland as the Germans advanced to destroy oil stocks and installations to deny their use to the Germans. They then moved to France and did the same, often despite skirmishes with the Germans and unhelpful local forces who did not believe that the Germans could break through. These operations were secret, but at one stage these territorials were the most decorated unit in the British Army.
So Eddie brings his innovative skills to the KFRE and joins them on their missions to blow the dumps. Eddie is used well and is not given all the credit for the great work of the KFRE, but the flow and pace that I have come to expect from Mr Barrington isn’t there. Too often things are explained to the reader by one of the characters “talking” to Eddie and this became too regular and too unnatural. So it is a slice of a very interesting bit of WW2 history, but is a little too factual and suffers a little from that.