Fiction

Title: No One Else to Kill
Author: Bob Doerr
Genre: Thriller/Mystery
Reviewer: Terry Shoptaugh

ISBN (links go to the MWSA Amazon store): 1590954238

In this book, Jim West travels to a small, remote hunting lodge in the Pecos Wilderness area in New Mexico to rendezvous with an old friend and do some hiking. His friend stands him up, and Jim is about to return home when a murder occurs in the lodge. Law enforcement jumps in, and Jim’s early departure plans are scrubbed. When a second murder occurs less than twenty four hours later, things really start to get dicey. Both crimes were intricately planned to mislead the authorities, no one appears to have a motive for the killings, and everyone has an alibi. Up against a wall with time running out, the deputy-in-charge asks West to be their man on the inside, but West is adamant that this is not his case to solve. Since his retirement from the Air Force, however, Fate has had her own plans for West. Why should this be any different?

Title: Mystic Dancer
Author: Frederick Rist
Genre: Historical Fiction
Reviewer: Lee Boyland

ISBN (links go to the MWSA Amazon store): 1469904926

The daughter of an Air Force pilot tracks down an elderly priest to learn the story her father will not tell her. The story of the only surviving priest from the secret war in Laos and now in hiding, the pilot, the brutal drug lord Khun Rhah and the Hmong mountain people who fought America’s war, rescued downed American pilots, were caught in the struggle between powerful drug lords and the greed of those in power and suffered greatly when finally abandoned by the Americans. Set against the background of the US involvement in Southeast Asia, Mystic Dancer spans a generation of time and takes us through the flood of violence, betrayal, insanity, drugs and the friendship of people who need each other to survive and to prevent tragedy for those who befriended America.

Big Mother 40: "A great read on Navy helicopter rescue operations in the Vietnam era. A very well-written, exciting, fast moving book about the life of two Navy lieutenants. A Navy Helicopter pilot and a Navy Seal and their teams performing their duties in extremely hazardous conditions. Although fiction, Marc's knowledge of Navy Helicopter and Navy SEAl operations and the planning it takes to complete these types of missions is evident throughout the book. His understanding of the overall concept of joint and naval operations and the specifics of both Special Forces and helicopter missions during the Vietnam era makes this a very believable scenario. I personally know that Marc lived the life of a Navy rescue helicopter pilot during the Vietnam War."
Ken L. Fisher Rear Admiral USN (retired) Naval Aviator and fighter pilot

ISBN (links go to the MWSA Amazon store): 1611792312

The U.S. Navy entered the Vietnam War prepared to fight either a conventional, or God forbid, a nuclear war with the Soviet Union. In the mid-sixties, as the Vietnam war escalated, the U.S. found itself without significant aviation capability to support special operations or combat search and rescue (CSAR). To support SEAL operations in the Mekong Delta, the Navy created a Helicopter Combat Attack Squadron that was eventually split into four squadrons tasked with combat search and rescue and special operations missions. Its call sign was the Sea Devils, but over time, the matte-black Sea King helicopters became known as the "Big Mothers." BIG MOTHER 4O is about the life of a Navy helicopter pilot, a Navy Seal, and their teams performing under extremely hazardous combat conditions and includes the women they loved.

Title: Code Word: Paternity
Author: Doug Norton
Genre: Thriller/Mystery
Reviewer: Dick Geschke

ISBN (links go to the MWSA Amazon store): 1457515555

The Armageddon genie--nuclear terrorism--is out of the bottle, freed by bin-Laden's heedless avengers and "a pissant dictator with Ray-Bans and a fondness for movies," as America's president puts it privately a few hours before announcing a decision that will mark him forever as either a hero or a mass murderer.

In a twenty-first century Pearl Harbor, nuclear terrorism takes its first city--Las Vegas--and stalks Baltimore. The terrorists have no return address--but the nuke they used does. A scientific trail scented by an ultra-secret U.S. program hidden for years behind the code word "Paternity" points toward the nation that made the bomb.

But there's no smoking gun. Struggling to lead a divided, panicked America, wring support from uncertain allies, and blunt the opportunism of rivals, the president faces an ethical dilemma threatening his marriage, his presidency, and his very soul. As commander-in-chief, controlling nearly unfathomable power to retaliate, he can put the Armageddon genie back in the bottle--but at what cost and to whom? Ambition, conscience, and duty collide as heads of state, politicians, diplomats, and generals maneuver with the lives of millions at stake.

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Title: Lethargica
Author: Edward H. Carpenter
Genre: Literary Fiction
Reviewer: Bob Doerr

ISBN (links go to the MWSA Amazon store): B007Z9AKJK

1917. In the French trench-lines of the Western Front, an American volunteer lives from letter to letter, as high explosive shells rain down and poison gas permeates the air. His wife’s words are the only link to a world that is still clean and bright, a world unlike the one which surrounds him; mud, barbed wire, shell fragments and decaying men, some dead, some still alive. And then, one day, her letters stop coming.

To what lengths will a man go to save the only thing truly worth fighting for? Or is it already too late? Based on terrible events that were all too real, this story will reveal hidden truths to shed light on one of the little-known tragedies of a decade that decimated a generation of the world’s youth.