SUMMARY:The #1 New York Times-bestselling series returns-and the stakes have never been higher. Charlie Castillo's secret unit has been disbanded-but that doesn't mean he's out of business. As experience has painfully shown him, there are many things the intelligence community can't do, won't do, or doesn't do well, and he has the men and assets to help set things straight. But the first opportunity, when it comes, is shocking: A FedEx package arrives, bearing photos of barrels containing some of the most dangerous biohazard materials on earth, all of which were supposed to have been destroyed during a raid on a secret Russian factory in the Congo. Who has them, and what do they want? Castillo has a feeling he's not going to like the answers.

No ordinary soldier had the machine-like skill and raw nerve of the berets. They chose to be the best, but only after the United States military chose them. To be among the select meant punishing preparation and sacrifice for the ultimate test: a war like no other in a land that most Americans knew nothing about: Vietnam."Powerfully authentic, insightful and honest." (B-O-T Editorial Review Board)

It is the fall of 1950. The Marines have made a pivotal breakthrough at Inchon, but a roller coaster awaits them. While Douglas MacArthur chomps at the bit, intent on surging across the 38th parallel, Brigadier General Fleming Pickering works desperately to mediate the escalating battle between MacArthur and President Harry Truman. And somewhere out there, his own daredevil pilot son, Pick, is lost behind enemy lines--and may be lost forever. From Publishers Weekly Megaseller Griffin (Honor Bound; Brotherhood of War; Men at War) musters another solid entry in his series chronicling the history of the U.S. Marines, now engaged in the Korean War. Gen. Douglas MacArthur, nicknamed El Supremo by his subordinates, is taken by surprise when the North Korean Army surges south across the 38th parallel. After early losses, he rallies his troops and stems the tide, but not for long. Intertwining stories of literally an army of characters reveal how MacArthur and his sycophantic staff overlook the entire Red Chinese Army, which is massed behind the Yalu River and about to enter the war. Brig. Gen. Fleming Pickering attempts to mediate the ongoing battles between feisty, give-'em-hell Harry Truman and the haughty MacArthur, while worrying about his pilot son, Malcolm "Pick" Pickering, who has been shot down behind enemy lines. The introduction of the Sikorsky H-19A helicopter into the war by Maj. Kenneth "Killer" McCoy and sidekick Master Gunner Ernie Zimmerman details the invention of tactics that will become commonplace in Vietnam. Readers looking for guts and glory military action will be disappointed, as barely a shot is fired in anger, but fans of Griffin's work understand that the pleasures are in the construction of a complex, big-picture history of war down to its smallest details: "There were two men in the rear seat, both of them wearing fur-collared zippered leather jackets officially known as Jacket, Flyers, Intermediate Type G-1." Veterans of the series will enjoy finding old comrades caught up in fresh adventures, while new-guy readers can easily enter here and pick up the ongoing story.

From Publishers WeeklyThe gung-ho Marines familiar to readers of Griffin's seven Corps novels (Behind the Lines, etc.) return for an eighth adventure?and not their best. Young Marine officers and enlisted men with high morale and low morals such as Ed Banning, Ken McCoy and Ernie Zimmerman are perfect for a secret (but remarkably improbable) OSS operation behind enemy lines in the Gobi Desert of Mongolia in 1943. Their mission: to establish a clandestine weather station and rescue a wayward group of Americans who fled China after the Japanese invasion in 1941 and have been lost in Mongolia for nearly two years. While the plot teases with a promise of suspense in an exotic and forbidding locale, the reality is that not a shot is fired, not a cliffhanger is encountered and three-fourths of the narrative is set safely back in the States, where the characters spend most of their time drinking, womanizing, disobeying orders and wringing their hands over how they can rejoin the war. Under the leadership of fatherly Brigadier General Fleming Pickering, a kind of Marine den daddy, they do return, although the result is anticlimactic. Numerous side plots provide color and historical perspective, but overwrought dialogue, flat narrative and soap-operatic storytelling leave this lengthy tale without snap. Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Library JournalGriffin continues his best-selling series on the Marine Corps with a new work featuring the improbably named Fleming Pickering. Pickering, who is in charge of the OSS's Pacific operations during World War II, gets some interesting assignments in the Gobi Desert.Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

It was more than an incident. It was a deadly assault across the 38th parallel. It was the Korean War. In the fear and frenzy of battle, those who had served with heroism before were called again by America to man the trenches and sandbag bunkers. From Pusan to the Yalu, they drove forward with commands too new and tanks too old: brothers in war, bonded together in battle as they had never been in peace...

From the #1 New York Times– and Wall Street Journal–bestselling author comes the dramatic second adventure in the brand-new Clandestine Operations series about the Cold War, the fledgling Central Intelligence Agency—and a new breed of warrior. In Top Secret, W.E.B. Griffin introduced a remarkable new cast of heroes as they found themselves on the front lines of an entirely different kind of war. Now, these men and women are going to find out what they've really gotten themselves into. James Cronley thought he had done well—he didn't know he'd done this well. His first successful mission for the about-to-be-official new Central Intelligence Directorate has drawn all kinds of attention, some welcome, some not. On the plus side, he's now a captain; promoted to Chief, DCI, Europe; and in charge of a top secret spy operation. On the minus side, a lot of people would like to know about that operation,...