Bøger af Douglas Reeman

Hong Kong, 1960s: The old submarine-chaser USS Hibiscus, refitting in a Hong Kong dockyard before being handed over to the Nationalist Chinese, is suddenly ordered to the desolate island group of Payenhau. For Captain Mark Gunnar, who is driven by the memory of his torture at the hands of Viet Cong guerillas, the new command is a chance to even the score against a ruthless, unrelenting enemy. But Payenhau is very different from his expectations, and as the weather worsens, a crisis develops that Gunnar must face alone.

With historical authenticity and the novelist's feel for detail, action, and emotion, Reeman brings the story of men at sea alive.

With his motor yacht Sea Fox, former naval officer Philip Vivian hoped to earn a living free from the petty restrictions of everyday life, close to the sea he loved. But his dream is threatened by financial difficulties, and soon he is trapped in a web of violence and crime, torn between his past loyalties and his duty to a society he despises.

Crammed with refugees, harried and bombed by enemy planes, the Sigli had struggled south in a desperate attempt to escape. Rupert Blair''s family had been among the passengers on that fateful journey in which the ship and all aboard had disappeared. Twenty years later, he still hasn''t forgotten-has never abandoned his obsession to discover exactly what happened. Now Rupert Blair embarks upon a journey of his own-one that will take him to a primitive, savage island in search of the truth. This is a thrilling tale of naval warfare from Douglas Reeman, the all-time best-selling master of naval fiction, who served with the Royal Navy on convoy duty in the Atlantic, the Arctic, and the North Sea.

The Allies are poised for the invasion of Italy. Yet the Germans hold a vital card: a floating dock, the only one in the Adriatic large enough to take a major warship. Moored at a small port near Rimini, it is exposed, vulnerable. It must be destroyed before the Germans can tow it to a safer harbour. Air, surface, and conventional submarine attacks are out of the question. Only one team can do the job and still stand a chance of surviving-the crew of His Majesty's midget submarine XE.51.

The orders from the Admiralty to the Captain were explicit. He was to take his ship to the small island of Santu, which lay under threat of invasion from the Communist mainland of China, and evacuate the British colony there. The ship, however, was the flat-bottomed, antiquated River gunboat H. M. S. Wagtail, waiting in a Hong Kong harbor for the disgrace of the breaker''s hammer to overtake her. Her captain, Justin Rolfe, embittered by the verdict of a court-martial, knew that the assignment offered more than escape from misery and humiliation-it was a reprieve for himself and his ship.

Singapore, November, 1941 . . . They called it the "Gibraltar of the Far East" - a British rock that could not be taken. But suddenly, in a lightning blow, Singapore may be defeated. Call it incompetence or call it false pride. It doesn''t really matter. Just as the warplanes of the Rising Sun take command of the skies. Lt. Ralph Trewin, who was a proud recipient of the Distinguished Service Cross, arrives at Singapore as second-in-command of the gun boat HMS Porcupine. Is it too late to overcome the ignorance and blind optimism he finds in Singapore?

Memories are short of HMS Royston - they have to be. As mother ship to a battered, war-torn bunch of MTBs she must carry out her vital role whatever the conditions, whatever the risks. Now with only three months' sea-experience behind him, Royce must learn the job the hard way - in the tough school of combat.

With the Allies poised for the invasion of Italy, the Germans hold a vital card: a floating dock, the only one in the Adriatic large enough to take a major warship. Air, surface and conventional submarine attacks are out of the question. Only one team can do the job and still stand a chance of surviving - the crew of HM Midget Submarine XE 51-

Yet even she was needed to protect the vital Atlantic sea lanes. Commander Lindsay, her new captain, had to work desperately to mould the ship's company - raw recruits and old timers - into a fighting force. And better than anyone, Lindsay knew this could be his last command, his last chance...

Twenty-five years ago HMS Terrapin was part of a crack hunter/killer group in the Battle of the Atlantic. Now she is working out her last commission in the Gulf of Thailand. To Lieutenant-Commander Standish, the frigate seems to mark the end of his hopes of a career in the Navy. Then a new captain arrives...

Douglas Reeman's 30th naval thriller1941To the residents and defence forces of the Crown Colony of Hong Kong, th war in Europe remains remote. Lieutenant-Commander Esmond Brooke, captain of HMS Serpent and a veteran of the cruel Atlantic, sees all too clearly the folly and incometence of Hong Kong's colonial administration.

1899, China. The Mandarins are becoming troublesome again and there are rumors that attacks will soon begin on British trade missions and legations. Captain David Blackwoodof the Royal Marines, received a VC in the bloody battle for Benin, Africa but is now being packed off to this apparent backwater.

It was an age of Empire, an age of contrast, and an age of dramatic change - and one which would determine the destinies of nations as well as of men.

But it is the summer of 1944, and on every front the war is going badly for Germany. When the roder comes to leave the Baltic to attack and destroy eenmy shipping in the Atlantic, Kapitan zur See Dieter Hechler knows that once out in the vast killing ground it will only be a matter of time before the hunter becomes the hunted.

While the politicians haggle over a situation which could hold the seeds of full-scale war, Commander Jermain must keep his faith in himself and in his new ship's potential - even when ordered to take the Temeraire to the edge of a catastrophe.

Germany opens the final, bitter round of the war with a new and deadly weapon in the struggle for the seas - the Vulcan sails from Kiel Harbour. guns, mines and torpedoes that can be brought into play instantly. The Vulcan is a commerce raider. And under crack commander Felix von Steiger her mission is to bring chaos to the seaways.

But to Captain Richard Chesnaye she brings back memories - memories of the First World War when he and the old monitor went through the Gallipoli campaign together. But as the war enters a new phase Chesnaye senses the possibility of a fresh, significant role - for him and the Saracen.

The old submarine-chaser USS Hibiscus, re-fitting in Hong Kong dockyard before being handed over to the Nationalist Chinese, is suddenly ordered to the desolate island group of Payenhau.

November 1941 Lieutenant Ralph Trewin, D S C, arrives at Singapore as second-in-command of the shallow-draught gunboat, H M S Porcupine. Through the misery and despair of this bloody campaign Trewin and his captain are forced to draw on each other's beliefs and weaknesses, and together they weld the gunboat into a symbol of bravery and pride.

For Rudolf Steiger, ace U-boat commander, there is a new sense of urgency. But now, as he takes the U-boat flotilla, Meteor, out into the bitter winter seas, he faces a new and deadly enemy - his own nagging doubts about the outcome of the war. Steiger knows that his destiny may be to court heroic death rather than suffer ignominious defeat.

The tide of defeat is thought to be turning, the enemy no longer advancing along the North African coast with Egypt and India as final objectives, and Kearton's is a new war of stealth, subterfuge, and daring, in which the Glory Boys are only too expendable.

The Sigli had been just an old passenger launch, but when the Japanese invaded Singapore during World War II everything that could float was pressed into service.

a relentless, savage war against an ever-present enemy and a violent sea - in an arena known only to its embittered survivors as the killing ground. HMS Gladiator was part of that war.

After four years, the tide of war is turning in North Africa and Europe. Men like Lieutenant James Ross, awarded the Victoria Cross for his work in underwater sabotage, or the desperate amateur Charles villiers, heir to a fortune now controlled by the Japanese. The two-man torpedo - the chariot - is the ultimate weapon in a high-risk war.

There will be days when you wonder at and question some of the risks you had to take, the sacrifices you were forced to offer in the face of death.'Kiel Harbour, 1945 - the war in Europe is at an end.