DRAKE'S WAR

An inexperienced British soldier becomes caught in the Battle of France in Saint’s military thriller series starter.

It’s May 1940, and British Army 2nd Lt. Tennyson Drake is on a reconnaissance mission in neutral Belgium’s Ardennes Forest. When the German First Panzer Division suddenly bursts through the trees and kills Drake’s commander, he’s left corralling his unit’s survivors on the wrong side of the battle line. All he has, in terms of orders, is a bloody notebook his dying captain handed to him, containing a drawing of a raven and pages of code: “Letters and numbers. Long lines of letters and numbers. There was nothing else in it. No orders. No instructions. No explanations. Just letters, numbers, and a bird.” Until a few months ago, Drake was just a “schoolie”—a barracks tutor—and he had no combat experience until today. Now Germany’s finest armored division has struck at a place that no one predicted: the impenetrable, and therefore lightly defended, Ardennes. The war has come, and Drake must try to prevent a complete collapse of the Allied defense. To do so, he must figure out the meaning of the raven book and the true mission that his unit was sent there to complete. Saint’s prose is sharp and suspenseful, rarely letting up as the story briskly unravels with all the haste of a retreating army. Here, for example, is Saint’s description as Drake makes it to the town of Sedan just as the German army is about to seize control of the area: “There, ahead of them at last, was the French defensive line. Barbed wire and machine gun posts encircled the city and blocked the road. But the straggling French soldiers were still running back, anxious faces glancing over their shoulders.” The author has written a propulsive, mystery-driven narrative that manages to effectively capture the stakes and scope of the real-life battle it portrays. Die-hard history buffs may take issue with a few authorial liberties, but fans of World War II films will certainly enjoy this cinematic offering.

A quick-paced, well-plotted novel set during a German invasion.