It is a truth universally acknowledged that convalescence reading should flow as smoothly past the eye and into the imagination as sunrise: no literary tricks and only the easiest classics, but more probably a good dose of your favourite guilty-pleasure genre. In my case, that would usually be military science fiction but, on this occasion, recovering from a bad bout of flu, I couldn’t find the requisite book cover featuring big blokes with blasters blasting bug-eyed aliens, so I thought I’d try out the World War II equivalent. I’m glad I did. I hadn’t got far into the book before I knew that I was in safe hands with Douglas Reeman. His hero was suitably heroic, with sufficient complexity to make him interesting but not so much complexity that he became demanding, the action was taut, well written and with just enough tension, the minor characters sufficiently well drawn to command passing regret when they met their end in service of the story. All in all, the perfect recuperation reading for fans of military fiction.