Griffin's dialogue and his eye for detail make this book effective; there are few battle scenes, although there are scenes in battle areas. Griffin gives the reader the interstitial details seldom seen in military fiction (or military film): the scenes where motivations are made clear, relationships are begun, fleshed out, and changed; we see offices, cockpits, restaurants, and board rooms, and they become as important as battlefields. For example, at the beginning of the novel, Canidy, Bitter, and their commanding officer "buzz" the field, unannounced, at the June 1941 Annapolis graduation: The Grumman F3F-1, a biplane, was then the standard Navy fighter aircraft. It was powered by a 950horsepower Wright Cyclone engine, which gave it a maximum speed of just about 230 miles per hour ....

. . .As the last three plane V of F3F1s passed over and began to gain altitude,...there came the sound of another&mdash...