Thursday, February 03, 2005

Book Review: "Prowl" by Gordan Runyan

Title: Prowl
Author: Gordan Runyan
Type: Christian military fiction
Publisher: Deo Volente

There is a problem with military fiction that is an “either/or” conundrum. You get either too many details or not enough and characterization and plot lines suffer.
Dale Brown, Tom Clancy, W.E. Griffin and the like seem to balance it well, although Brown is all Air Force, Clancy mostly Navy and Griffin is stuck in W.W.II and Vietnam.
“Prowl” doesn’t really suffer from trying to bridge a Christian fiction novel and a Tom Clancy-like Navy-submarine thriller — it does focus on the great characters — but it sometimes bogs down in the details.
Central to the story is Machinist’s Mate First Class Mark Reed and his wife, J.L. Their relationship, a not-so-strong-because-of-long-Navy-voyages-relationship, is rocked even more as Mark heads off on another 90-day cruise on a submarine. It’s a career-building cruise for Mark, but viewed as a marriage-breaker for newly-saved J.L. Apparently her Christian conversion set them apart even more, making the drama of his emergency cruise even more heavy.
You see, someone murdered a sailor on Mark’s new sub. Only everyone doesn’t know it was murder — they think it was a stress-induced suicide.
And to make things even more complicated, North Koreans have a secret sub that Mark’s sub, the U.S.S. Omaha, is sent out to find — and a traitorous, American hacker-turned-spy has given the North Koreans a way to sink the Omaha.
And to pile more on to the plot, J.L. and her friend, Rita, get involved in a shoot-out in Hawaii with some North Koreans and are chased by a fake FBI agent that is looking for Rita — who really is an undercover-spy.
Oh, and by the way, J.L. is pregnant and Mark is in danger of finding the murderer still on board the sub.
Sound complicated? Yowza!
This book works more than it doesn’t work. It falls into the technothriller trap of giving WAY too many useless details about submarine life that don’t quite make sense, except to sailors that have lived on one. It also assumes the reader has some idea of Navy terminology and life — something that is a bit irritating.
What works is how the Christian element doesn’t overpower the storyline and actually feels right. And even if you aren’t Christian, it is an interesting sub-plot to the story.
The action builds well and doesn’t get lost. The book really times its punches just right and the main characters don’t come across as know-it-all superheroes. They’re real people living in a crazy story, yes, but the action doesn’t feel too outlandish.
This is a good read. The only hurt is the plethora of sub details, but it is a great romp and worth the time to read it.
Dale's Book Grade B+