In Semper Fi, Griffin's characters again largely adhere to broad but definite parameters. Ken "Killer" McCoy is a kid from a rough family in just-asrough Bethlehem, PA, who seems always to have been a fast riser — into the Corps at eighteen, Corporal after only four years (the interwar promotion rate was very slow for both officers and enlisted personnel), lieutenant only a year later. His best friend, Malcolm "Pick" Pickering, is the grandson of a wealthy hotelier, accomplished in ail the details of the hotel business, son of the owner of a steamship line, and he and McCoy are soul mates, not externally — one is a touchy, tough scrapper, and the other a debonair, insouciant playboy. But both seem born to rise to occasion, as Ken earlier proved through killing three Italian Marines in self-defense, and as they both prove in officer training school. Ellen Feller...