Product Description

Old and new faces find themselves swept into a maelstrom of danger when the United States becomes deeply involved in the 1964 Congo Rebellion. Reissue. NYT.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #46209 in Books
• Published on: 1988-07-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 7
• Binding: Paperback
• 384 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Griffin already has a high profile in Berkley paperback; his six-volume Brotherhood of War saga, a Green Beret epic spanning WW II to Richard Nixon's presidency, has more than three million copies in print. With The New Breed, the series segues into hardcover, but this is not so much a sequel as a lengthy missing chapter from volume six. In late 1963, Col. Sandy Felter, formerly JFK's private Ollie North, returns from secret missions to Vietnam and the Congo and persuades new president LBJ that the Congo is as volatile as Southeast Asia. Felter's longtime friend, Manhattan banking scion Lt. Col. Craig Lowell, helps secure a crew that can combat any rebellion. Among the cast of characters: Jack Portet, an Army private who grew up flying planes in the Congo; Marjorie Bellmon, an officer's daughter for whom Jack goes "Top Gun"; Karl-Heinz Wagner, an East German who escaped through the Berlin Wall with his sister, Ursula; and Geoff Craig, Lowell's young Army cousin and Ursula's husband. The novel moves quickly, if somewhat disjointedly; Griffin's short-chapter, staccato style hampers continuity. He is also so entrenched in military jargon and lifestyle that the civilian reader may sometimes be confused. Those who have had some exposure to the service, however, will experience jolts of recognition in the hard-hitting narrative. Literary Guild and Doubleday Book Club alternates; Military Book Club selection.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

A Fine, Stand-Alone Addition to a Solid Series
"The Brotherhood of War" series is really six books, beginning in 1944 with "The Lieutenants" and ending in 1970 with "The Generals." This book, though nominally #7 in the series, is (like "The Aviators," nominally #8) not so much a part of the series as a stand-alone adjunct to it. Major characters from the first six books (Craig Lowell, Sandy Felter) are supporting characters here, and the focus is on characters that didn't exist (or received limited attention) in the main series.

One happy result of this is that, although "The New Breed" *can* be read as part of the original series (Note: Descriptions of it as a "prequel" to "The Generals" notwithstanding, it's really read better *after* that book) it also works perfectly well as a stand-alone novel. Fans of the series will see dimensions in the Craig Lowell/Geoff Craig relationships that first-timers won't, but those nuances aren't critical to enjoying the story.

The story proper is about U. S. Army intervention in the former Belgian Congo during its post-independence civil war . . . an aspect of the Cold War that most Americans know about only from an old Tom Lehrer lyric about making peace "the way we did in Stanleyville and Saigon." Griffin makes good use of the post-colonial setting, and Col. Michael "Mad Mike" Hoare, a famous leader of mercenaries in the real world, makes a credible supporting character. The three leading fictional characters, Karl-Heinz Wagner, Geoffrey Craig, and Jacques "Jack" Portet are all drawn well enough to be interesting, and Griffin uses Wagner (an East German defector) and Portet (a Belgian-American airline pilot who gets drafted) to say some thoughtful things about loyalty and cultural differences.

What really makes a novel like this stand or fall, however, is the quality of the plot, and here (perhaps sensing that he's writing a stand-alone story) Griffin does better than usual at creating a story arc that lasts through the whole book, ties the characters together, and comes to a satisfying conclusion.

This is (like Griffin's other books) more a "military procedural" than a slam-bang, shoot-em-up "war story." That may disappoint some readers (try Wilbur Smith's "Dark of the Sun" or "Cry Wolf") but it's true to the characters and material in a way that extravagant violence wouldn't be. Recommended

Somethings fishy in Denmark...
I've enjoyed W.E.B. Griffin's books over the years but I'm none too sure of this or any of his newer books in the series (after the Colonels). While it's fiction and Griffin is allowed to rewrite history but it's annoying when he rewrites his own fictional history. Case in point, long time readers know how Craig Lowell received his promotion to Lieutenant so that he could play polo just after WWII. Yet in this book we're told that he received it as a battlefield commission in Greece. It's as good a read as any of the other books he's written but it seems he wasn't paying a lot of attention to his own source material while writing it.

Excellent
This is yet another great book in the Brotherhood of Arms series. The characters are great and I got a real feel for military life.