The Intruders

In the sequel to The Flight of the Intruder, ace Navy pilot Jake Grafton faces a tough new challenge as a peacetime warrior in 1973 when he is assigned the task of teaching a group of inexperienced Marine pilots the art of carrier aviation. 250,000 first printing.

Coonts's sixth techno-thriller to feature Jake Grafton (The Red Horseman) takes the heroic Navy aviator back to 1973, immediately following the events of his debut in Flight of the Intruder. Disillusioned by the killing and dying "for nothing" that he saw in Vietnam, Jake is at a crossroads. Should he try to find his way in civilian life, or stay in the service and make the demanding transition from hotshot jet jockey to professional Naval officer? He mulls over his decision while flying A-6 Intruders with a Marine squadron assigned to an aircraft carrier in the Pacific. As always with Coonts, the terrors and elations of flying take center stage, with Jake and his buddies bluffing death regularly during night landings and equipment failures, and in the face of mistakes that even the best pilots make. But as Jake deals with a threatening Soviet vessel, is chased by a MiG, saves his plane after it has been hit by lightning and finally is shot down and captured by Sumatran pirates, it becomes clear that the novel is comprised of episodes adrift from any solid plotline; it's as if Coonts has stuffed this grab bag willy-nilly with every flying incident he couldn't work into his other books. With its dominant question, about Jake's future, a foregone conclusion, this story stands as one of the weakest in the series, recommended only for flight-hungry armchair pilots uninterested in ancillaries like proper plot, character development and suspense. Simon & Schuster Audio; major ad/promo; author tour.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Picking up where they left off in Flight of the Intruder (1986), Coonts and his inimitable Navy flyboy, Lt. Jake Grafton, coast on autopilot in this turgid novel of stick-and-rudder derring-do. Long on jargon, acronyms, and technical descriptions but short on actual storytelling, the saga begins in the days following the 1973 US pullback from Vietnam. On leave, Jake pays a visit to best gal Callie McKenzie's home. Callie's pop, a station wagon liberal embittered by the crippling injuries sustained in battle by his son, Theron, has a heated debate with the usually dovish Jake, precipitating an angry flight to a local watering hole. A few glasses later, Jake overhears a drunk taunting a crippled vet and launches the loudmouth through a window. To escape legal reprisal, our hero gladly accepts his first peacetime assignment: instructing Marine pilots in the manly art of carrier-based flying aboard the USS Columbia. Here's where the eponymous A-6 Intruder attack aircraft comes in, and any semblance of plot departs. Sure, there are many new characters: Hugh Skidmore, aka The Real McCoy, a sassy Navy instructor who plays the stock market; Jake's navigator, ``Flap'' LeBeau, a wisdom-spouting Afro-American Marine; and other types running the gamut from fun-loving to psychotic. But action mainly consists of A-6 crews endlessly executing noncombat maneuvers at sea. A difficult task to be sure, but not interesting enough to hold together a novel. In fact, with the exception of a running subplot featuring a ``line-in-the-sand'' conflict with the nearby Soviet fleet and Jake and Flap's bold escape from gunrunners near the story's end, Coonts's narrative style very closely resembles a commander's log--sans command. Those hale enough to finish this muddled flight manual cum novel in one sitting will likely possess enough knowledge about the A-6 to fly one in their sleep. A good thing, since the book certainly won't keep them awake. (First printing of 225,000; author tour) -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

A few years ago, the U.S. was in the throes of an aviation fad, aided by Hollywood's Top Gun and such novels as Coonts' Flight of the Intruder (1986), which spotlighted brooding navy pilot Jake Grafton's various missions dropping napalm on Vietnam. Well, the war's over and Jake's still brooding, not only about the rightness or wrongness of Vietnam, but also about whether he should have held off on marrying Callie McKenzie, his dream woman. While he's brooding, he gets into a stupid bar fight and is shipped out to the Pacific to fly with the marines, specifically "Flap" LeBeau, a fanatic. Jake and Flap fly sorties for about 150 pages in preparation for a possible war against the Soviet Union (remember, it's 1973), which, as we all know, never happens. LeBeau is a great character, a successful marine who rose from poverty and has all things in perspective, but Grafton as a navy pilot is an oddity. As Coonts' metaphor for Vietnam, he is a worrywart, a mass of confused contradiction--and, unfortunately, a book like this needs a more cocksure hero. What it also needs, strangely enough, is less flying; the only time things really start to heat up is when the characters are grounded (especially right at the end). But expect high demand. Joe Collins