David Poyer
St. Martin's Press
320 pgs.
I'll Be Honest...
This book will take you back to arguably the most important event in America's history. David Poyer's latest novel, featuring his recurring character, Commander Dan Lenson, USN, begins with Lenson's visit to the Pentagon and his wife's visit to the World Trade Center on September, 11, 2001. Also included in the novel is SEAL Teddy Oberg and Special Agent Aisha Ar-Rahim. None of these characters meet one another, rather the reader is brought through different aspects of the momentous event and its aftermath. Lenson's trail follows the strike on the Pentagon and then the military's response in trying to locate the enemy from a grand perspective. Lenson's wife, Blair, is visiting the Twin Towers for a job interview. Teddy takes the reader for the boots-on-the-ground perspective of soldiers searching for the enemy. Aisha not only shows one of the missions leading up to the Towers, but also how people reacted.
Make no mistake, this novel will take you back. Poyer's writing is powerful and honest. Each journey is unique and they intertwine with one another to create the full picture on how the country was dealing with the event from both a military and personal perspective. It's not often that you will be reading and be so emotionally engaged with the environment, but the description of certain passages, whether it is inf the staircase in one of the Towers or the cold, jagged mountains of Afghanistan, are so perfectly rendered that you can't help but be there. And there are no Rambos in this novel. This novel details how the military did/would react to an event like this, and each character has a history and vulnerabilities that you see in the person next to you. This is not to say that they are not heroes, as events such as this show how certain people can do actions that seem superhuman.
So to be honest, I say go out and read this novel. The novel would be classified under Military Fiction, but is a great representation of the event that we all went through. As a retired naval officer, Poyer is able to bring an accurate representation of how motions were put into place, as well as the general tone of the conversations between soldiers. It is a novel that now, during the 10th anniversary of 9/11, brings you back to what we experienced.
