The last heroes

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The last heroes

Title:

The last heroes

Author:

Griffin, W. E. B.

ISBN:

9780399142895

Publication Information:

New York : G.P. Putnam's Sons, c1997.

Physical Description:

342 p. ; 24 cm.

Series:

Men at war ;

General Note:

"Originally published under the pseudonym Alex Baldwin."

Corporate Subject:

United States. Office of Strategic Services -- Fiction.

Subject Term:

World War, 1939-1945 -- Secret service -- United States -- Fiction.

World War, 1939-1945 -- Fiction.

Genre:

War stories.

Spy stories.

Summary:

Determined that the United States will be prepared for war, Franklin D. Roosevelt and "Wild Bill" Donovan orchestrate the most complex espionage organization in history, the Office of Strategic Services. Young and daring, the OSS assemble under a thin camouflage of diplomacy and then disperse throughout the world to conduct their operations, and no operation is more critical than the one being conducted by hotshot pilot Richard Canidy and his half-German friend Eric Fulmar: to secure the rare ore that will power a top-secret weapon coveted on both sides of the Atlantic--the atomic bomb.

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Library	Call Number	Status
Searching... Bayport Public Library	FICTION GRI	Searching... Unknown
Searching... R.H. Stafford Library (Woodbury)	FICTION GRI	Searching... Unknown

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Summary

In The Last Heroes, it is June 1941. War clouds break over Europe, and determined that the United States will be prepared, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Wild Bill Donovan orchestrate the most complex espionage organization in history, the Office of Strategic Services. Young and daring, the handpicked members of the OSS assemble under a thin camouflage of diplomacy and then disperse throughout the world to conduct operations upon which may hinge the entire outcome of the war. And of them all, no operation may be more critical than the one being conducted by hotshot pilot Richard Canidy and his half-German wild-card friend Eric Fulmar: to secure the rare ore that will power a top-secret weapon coveted on both sides of the Atlantic - the atomic bomb.

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 (1)

Kirkus Review

First hardcover edition of a volume from a paperback series, on the OSS in WW II, that the ever-popular Griffin (Blood and Honor, 1997, etc.) published pseudonymously (in 1985) as Alex Baldwin. In mid-1941, fun-loving Richard Canidy and straight-arrow Edwin Bitter are hotshot pilot instructors at the Navy's air station in Pensacola. With minimal prompting, they soon volunteer to serve with the so-called Flying Tigers. Before heading off (on a slow boat) to China, however, these two well-connected friends find time to join the social whirl in Washington, where crafty FDR has detailed Wild Bill Donovan to create an Office of Strategic Services. Shortly after arriving in Southeast Asia, Dick becomes an ace, downing five Japanese planes in a single sortie. The very same day, he's whisked away on orders from the White House. Meantime, the US (now at war against the Axis powers) plans to build an atomic bomb but lacks a secure source of uraninite. Which is where Dick comes in. His prep-school chum Eric Fulmar (the son of an American film actress and a German industrialist) is dodging the draft boards of both nations by hiding out in North Africa. Operating under cover from the US Embassy in Morocco, Dick is to enlist the aid of Fulmar in abducting a French mining engineer with badly needed information on a vital ore cache in the Belgian Congo. To make the mission more challenging, the amateur agents must carry out their assignment on a split-second schedule (to make an offshore rendezvous with a submarine) and get their man away without arousing the suspicions of either the Nazi or Vichy forces controlling the Maghreb coast. A rousing to-the-ends-of-the-earth start for an absorbing narrative takeout on the shadow warriors who handled some decidedly odd jobs in aid of the Allied cause. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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