Battle Stations

DEPTH FORCE #4

by Irving A. Greenfield

Depth Force, #4

255 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published July 1, 1985

About the author

Irving Greenfield was born in Brooklyn, New York. He was a youthful runaway, a merchant seaman, and a soldier during the Korean War, afer which his writing talent burst into print. His novel, The Ancient of Days, was a best-seller for six weeks and Tagget was made into a film for TV. his work has appeared in a variety of media, but, of all his works, Only the Dead Speak Russian is his masterpiece.

Reviews

[KerryO · Rating 5 out of 5]

This series is a killer - non-stop underwater action. Once I start reading, I can't stop until I am done with the book!!!

[Richard A Lambing · Rating 5 out of 5]

Exciting series!

[David B · Rating 3 out of 5]

It’s difficult to succinctly say what this book is really about since the copy on the back cover only refers to the last 40 pages or so. The first 200 pages are Irving A. Greenfield’s patented meandering storyline that just spills over from the previous volume without any recaps or reminders. For a while, I thought Greenfield had finally cracked the code on this series. There are fewer cocktail parties and long conversations between Boxer and his son about pizza toppings and more international intrigue and political backstabbing, but it all turns out to be a tease. Boxer’s Soviet counterpart, with whom he shares a mutual respect, is cornered into a plot to kidnap or assassinate Boxer, so it looks like we might get some man on the run action…but Boxer has to return home when his mother is hospitalized, so it goes nowhere. But it turns out Mom was beaten to death in a home invasion and Boxer knows a guy who can track down the perps, so it looks like we might get some vigilante action…but nothing comes of that, either. To be fair, both of these plot threads might be picked up in a future volume without any reference to what happened in this one. Greenfield’s facility with sex scenes remains unchanged; any eroticism he manages to conjure dissipates every time he drops the term “bung-hole.”

https://thericochetreviewer.blogspot....

[Timothy McNeil · Rating 2 out of 5]

Filled with all the wrong details (I don't know if the details are wrong, but the attention to them detracts from any sense of pace) and frequent, but joyless sex scenes, Greenfield's fourth effort in the series is an odd duck. Who was the intended audience, people who would never commit to reading an entire Clancy novel AND who needed a hero who has sex with everyone he meets?