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Summary
Author Notes
W. E. B. Griffin is one of eight pseudonyms used by William E. Butterworth III, who was born in Newark, New Jersey on November 10, 1929. He enlisted in the U.S. Army as a private in 1946 and was assigned to the Army of Occupation in Germany. He left the service in 1947 but was recalled to active duty in 1951 because of the Korean War. After leaving the service for the second time, he remained in Korea as a combat correspondent. He was later appointed chief of the publications division of the Signal Aviation Test and Support Activity at the Army Aviation Center in Fort Rucker, Alabama. He received the Brigadier General Robert L. Dening Memorial Distinguished Service Award of the U.S. Marine Corps Combat Correspondents Association in 1991 and the Veterans of Foreign Wars News Media Award in 1999.
He wrote more than 200 books including the Brotherhood of War series, The Corps series, Badge of Honor series, Honor Bound series, Presidential Agent series, Men at War series, and A Clandestine Operations Novel series. Under his own name, he wrote 12 sequels in the 1970s to Richard Hooker's book M*A*S*H. His other pen names included Alex Baldwin, Webb Beech, and Walter E. Blake. He wrote over 20 books with his son William E. Butterworth IV. He received the Alabama Author's Award in 1982 from the Alabama Library Association. He died on February 12, 2019 at the age of 89.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Set in the spy-infested capital of Argentina in 1943, Griffin's newest is a sequel to Honor Bound (1994) and adheres to the author's usual recipe of good guys, bad women and broad but sometimes transparent suspense and melodrama. Clete Frade is a Marine Corps aviator, a hero of Guadalcanal. Wealthy and well connected, he is also a spook for the OSS and perfect for an undercover job in Buenos Aires because he's an Argentine citizen. Assisted by two useless Army buddies, a navy chief who considers himself a gaucho and a loyal Argentine bodyguard, Frade is sent south to sniff out both a suspected plot to overthrow the Argentine government and a report of a Nazi ship using Argentine waters to resupply German submarines. He stumbles into much more, however, with the assassination of his Argentine father, who is the leader of the coup plot, and with his discovery of a Nazi scheme to ransom Jews out of Dachau and to use the money to finance a sanctuary for fugitive Nazis should Germany lose the war. Frade spars with diplomats, spies, his OSS boss, the FBI, the Argentine military and an SS colonel, all the while trying to aid one conspiracy and destroy the others. There's no deep moral digging here as there is in, say, le Carré. But Griffin is a savvy old hand and here, working with an exotic setting and a complex plot, delivers the sort of sturdy entertainment his fans expect. (Jan.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
A rousing sequel to the prolific Griffin's Honor Bound (1994), which introduced Cletus Howell Frade, a US Marine Corps fighter pilot (born in Argentina to an American mother) on assignment for the OSS in WW II Buenos Aires. This time out, Clete heads back to neutral Argentina in the spring of 1943 after an extended leave spent with his maternal grandfather, an autocratic oil tycoon. Ostensibly returning to bury his father (a wealthy colonel assassinated by Nazi agents fearful that he might overthrow the Castillo regime and take Argentina to war on the side of the Allies), Clete remains under orders from the cloak-and-dagger crowd. His mission: to keep a noncombatant vessel from using Argentina's coastal waters to rearm and refuel German U- boats on patrol in the South Atlantic. Fluent in Spanish, the personable young leatherneck moves in the capital city's highest social and military circles. While scheming how to do his duty without causing an international incident, Clete is tipped off by a Luftwaffe chum attached to the Third Reich's embassy that the supply ship will be carrying a massive amount of money earmarked to establish Nazi brass in postwar South America. A member of his undercover team also learns of a big-money racket whereby Jews may be ransomed from European death camps and resettled in Latin nations like Uruguay. With time out to put his flying skills at the disposal of insurgent Argentinean officers (whose ranks include Juan Domingo Perón) in their successful coup, and to help plan a wedding that will unite him with the high-born señorita he has made great with child, Clete finds a way to turn the tables on the villainous Nazis without upsetting any diplomatic applecarts; and he manages also to exact a satisfactory measure of revenge for the untimely death of his father. An immensely entertaining adventure set in an equally intriguing milieu.
Booklist Review
Griffin reunites the main characters from Honor Bound (1993) in a cloak-and-dagger tale set in World War II Buenos Aires. Marine pilot and OSS operative Cletus Frade is sent to Argentina, ostensibly as a military attacheto the U.S. ambassador. Actually, he is there to avenge his father's murder. An influential man in Argentine politics who was pro-Allies, Frade's father was killed by Nazi intelligence agents because they feared he might become president. Meanwhile, an SS intelligence officer arrives. Part of his mission is to help a German submarine infiltrate Argentine waters. The SS officer and Frade are soon playing cat and mouse, though they're hampered by Argentina's neutrality. In the background, the Argentine military is getting ready to stage a coup to bring General Peron to power. This book is intricately plotted and is packed with those accurate period details that fans of Griffin have come to expect, minus the intense action of his combat novels. --Brian McCombie
Library Journal Review
It is April 1943 in this sequel to Griffin's Honor Bound (Audio Reviews, LJ 8/94). Major Cletus Frade and his colleaguesdemolitions specialist Anthony Pelosi and communications expert Dave Ettingerare again embroiled in wartime intrigue in Argentina. The German high command has sent a clandestine ship to resupply submarines in the South Atlantic. Along with the supplies, the ship carries a large cache of money earmarked for the postwar Reich. Having destroyed its predecessor, Frade must find a way to stop the vessel now steaming toward Buenos Aires. Frade and his colleagues must thread their way through Axis and Allied sympathizers as well as between rival OSS and FBI factions in order to fulfill their mission. A good story, though the many subplots tend to confuse rather than assist in unraveling the complicated web of conspiracy. Read well by Edward Herrmann. Recommended for large fiction collections.Germaine C. Linkins, SUNY at Potsdam Lib. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
