The Med (Dan Lenson Novels)

I'm not surprised that Poyer's sea novels are required reading in the U.S. Naval Academy's Literature of the Sea course. Although I myself am not ex-navy, its easy to see that Poyer's sea noverls -- and certainly The Med -- realistically depict the difficult choices that a Naval officer can find himself making. The Med forces its protagonist, Lt. (j.g.) Lenson, to choose between what's right and what will advance his career -- between Annapolis installed blind obedience and the higher good. The characters are well drawn. They are definately not the one-dimensional cartoons found in most military-based novels and movies. Even the "villains" are complex and plausible. They are people you've met and known. Their failings and virtues are amplified by the hugely stressful circumstances they are placed in and the high stakes of the action.There is less jargon in The Med than in The Circle..... In giving The Med four stars I am saying Poyer wrote a truly excellent novel.

"The Med" is a great read. I say this not just because I'm a former destroyer sailor who enjoys an authentic rendering of naval action, though the book would have repaid my time on this basis alone. "The Med" is also a compelling story with believable characters (some sympathetic, some contemptible) dealing with real issues under real stress.The central character, Lietunant Junior Grade Dan Lenson, is an appealing man whose integrity you can feel as you watch him struggle with the question of just how far one has to go in the name of duty. Just how much one has to put up with from a swine with four stripes. You see him realize, intellectually and viscerally, that the orders he gives (or doesn't give) may decide whether men live or die. The Queeg-like Sundstrom (not as crazy as Queeg, but as conniving and perhaps even more inadequate) shows how everyone's life can be put in danger by a dithering, totally self-centered, incompetent commander.I don't know how people who've not been in the Navy will react to the build-up of tension between the junior officer Lenson and the incompetent and evil commadore. For those who understand what total control a commander at sea has over a subordinate, and what serious business it is to even appear to question authority, there will be some electric moments. (By comparison, telling a civilian boss to shove off is nothing; I've done it more than once with hardly a measurable change in my blood pressure.)The story is a believable and complex one (that could go from novel to headline anyday) involving an amphibious task force in the Mediterranean compelled by terrorits to go into action fraught with physical, political, and military peril. In sub-plots we follow a squad of marines fighting each other until they face a real enemy; a first-rate chief machinists mate who must battle old, balky equipment as well as officers who demand too much (some things never change); and an officer's wife who must decide whether she loves her husband as much as she hates the Navy. These are played out against the background of vicious Middle East politics and resentments and the struggle between a good officer pushed almost beyond humnan endurance and a horrible officer in busines for himself. And boy does Poyer - a former Navy officer - reproduce Navy life accurately. Not just in the speech and jargon, though that's right on. I could almost smell the salt water and feel the ship roll under me as I read. I almost expected to hear a bosun's whistle (fortunately, I didn't taste the creamed chipped beef). He has everything down right: the Marines' cocky attitudes, the chiefs' raunchy stories, and the weariness of the sleepless drudgery that makes up so much of Navy life at sea. Poyer's Navy is so real I feel that after I've read all his novels (and I plan to) I'll rate another hash mark.

As a fellow Naval Officer,I know naval terminology and ships. David Poyer provides all the action and sounds found on naval vessels. His indepth knowledge provides realistic sights and sounds of the "old Navy". I highly recommend this book and the other Navy series to anyone interested in great mysteries.

Lieutenant (jg) Dan Lenson, USN is on a Med cruise aboard a destroyer. His wife and daughter are in Cyprus at the US embassy and are taken hostage by a group of Islamic terrorists. Poyer takes the reader through Lenson's time at sea by reaching out from the ink and paper and pulling the reader into the heavy seas, the port calls, cramped compartments below deck, and the horror of a mob storming the American embassy and taking a man's family hostage along with several dozen others. It starts off a little slow, but turns into one helluvan epic!