by Joe Buff

The next world war rages. With the Allies at a stalemate with the Berlin-Boer Axis, every battle takes on a new significance. But in a conflict fought with billion-dollar technology and campaigns comprising millions of soldiers, the outcome may rest in the hands of a single man... Commander Jeffrey Fuller, captain of America's most sophisticated and deadly fast-attack nuclear submarine, the USS Challenger, is accustomed to victory in battle. But for his latest mission he is informed that the only way he can succeed is if he crosses into enemy waters -- without firing a single shot. His objective: recover a spy. The world of espionage is unknown territory for Fuller. He is ordered to locate an asset, code-named Zeno, who may hold the key to staving off a crippling Axis attack. But this new world is full of lies, feints, and betrayals. In combat, Fuller always knows who his enemy is and how to defeat him. In the shadow world of covert operatives and counterintelligence, the distinction between enemy and ally is far more elusive. And it only gets more complicated. Steaming toward his target, Fuller and his crew begin to suspect that the spy they have been sent to retrieve may in fact be a subterfuge, a ploy intended to lure the Allies' most dangerous weapon into enemy hands. With the clock ticking down to an invasion that could alter the course of the war, Fuller suspects that his new " friend" could even be a double agent, intent on using Challenger as a weapon against his own allies, destroying the fragile ties binding nations in war. Fuller is accustomed to the codes of the Silent Service, where loyalty is taken for granted, orders are followed without question, and battles are as precise as a torpedo's firing solution. But now he must adapt to a world where betrayers become the new patriots and lies are the instruments of destruction. With the lives of his crew and the fate of his country hanging in the balance, he will have to risk everything on the word of a man who has, for the last two years, served Fuller's most bitter enemies.

 Email: readermail@joebuff.com

Publisher: Morrow/HarperTorch, 2004 hardcover, 2005 paperback

Ordering Info: Amazon, all brick-and-mortar & on-line bookstores, or via JoeBuff.com

by John J. Gobbell

The Japanese siege of Bataan and Corregidor during World War II was one of the worst defeats in U.S. military history. Over 130,000 GIs and Filipinos were slaughtered on this oft-forgotten Pacific front. And if it were not for naval intelligence’s success in breaking the JN-25, the Japanese Navy code, Midway Island would have fallen as well, leaving Hawaii and perhaps even the West Coast of the United States for the taking. THE LAST LIEUTENANT, an unforgettable World War II thriller on part EYE OF THE NEEDLE and one part FROM HERE TO ETERNITY, captures the heart and soul of those who fought to stop worldwide fascism. With the eye for detail of a military historian and the writing skills that have brought comparison to John Le Carré and James Jones, John J. Gobbell takes his place among today’s finest historical thriller writers. THE LAST LIEUTENANT is Todd Ingram. Half-starved and beyond exhaustion, Ingram refuses to give up the fight when General Jonathan Wainwright surrenders Corregidor to the Japanese. As artillery blasts The Rock’s beaches and hillsides, Ingram commandeers a thirty-six foot launch with eleven other desperate men. But only Ingram knows the most dangerous threat of all: that a Nazi spy named Walter Radtke lies undiscovered aboard the submarine U.S.S. Wolfish, the last evacuation submarine off the island. The Nazis knows about Chester Nimitz’s plan to trap the Japanese fleet at Midway and needs just thirty seconds and a radio to get a warning dispatch to Yamamoto. Ingram must track down the spy through miles of Japanese-infested waters and stop him before the tide of the war turns irrevocably to the rising sun. Before Ingram can save himself, Helen Duran, the Army nurse he loves, and his men, he must save his country. Radtke knows that the U.S. navy has cracked the Japanese code and that Commander in Chief Chester Nimitz is planning a trap for the Japanese fleet at Midway. All Radtke needs is a radio and thirty seconds.

email: john@johnjgobbell.com

Publisher: St. Martin's Press, 1995 Hardcover 1997

Ordering Info: Amazon