This one is about the crew of a Lancaster bomber who carry out a series of runs during their tour of duty in WW2. Tuesday is the name of the airplane they fly, named in honour of the - shock - woman pilot who delivers it to their airfield at the start of the book. The story is told the crew's radio operator - Charlie Bassett.

Well the obvious comparison to be made is one with Bomber, and it has to be said that this book is nowhere near as good. Although I think it's longer (it was about 14 CDs). Unlike Bomber, whose narrative covers just a single 24-hour period, this story covers multiple missions, as well as the story of what the crew gets up to in between.

In fact, most of the book is devoted to the "in between" bits - there's not very much detail about the missions themselves, and what there is seems very vague in comparison to the Len Deighton book. The theme here is more about how the men (and women) got on with their lives during wartime. And a large part of what they got on with was sex - everyone seems extremely promiscuous, with the women seeming to be just as keen on sleeping with loads of men as the men were with women. That didn't feel particularly believable to me but maybe it really was like that.

There's an epilogue which is very similar (although not as good) as the one in Bomber, where he says "if you go there now, you can still see the patterns of the runways..." etc., so I was expecting him to acknowledge that book, but he didn't. I assume he must have read it though, at least for research purposes. But it's a bit disappointing to see so many five star reviews of this on Amazon by people who've presumably not read the LD book.

This book was OK-ish, but just nowhere near as good as Bomber. There are other "... War" books which form a series, of which this is the first, but I don't think I'd bother with them. There are better WW2 books around.

Completed : 25-Mar-2010 (audiobook)