Len Deighton's devastating novel is a gripping minute-by-minute account of what happens over the next twenty-four hours. Len Deighton’s novel casts a cold eye on the event, tending towards the ‘Genghis Khan’ view of things. Deighton creates an enormous cast that includes airmen, soldiers, firemen, nurses, doctors, wives and civilians of all descriptions which lends itself to an intricate plot despite the fact that the story is developed within the confines of one day. An exhaustive and, to some extent, exhausting fictional account of a British bombing raid on a German town in mid-1943. The drama threaded through the station's unchangeable schedule of news and current affairs from early morning to midnight.

The Scotsman found it promising, the Observer thought it had grip, but a left-wing weekly said that “handmade and thus readily identifiable cigarette ends have become a careless vice among the sort of villains who people this year’s mediocre detective fiction. You can unsubscribe from our list at any point by changing your preferences, or contacting us directly. Across the North Sea, Oberleutnant Victor Löwenherz, a Junkers Ju 88 night fighter pilot who intercepts RAF bombers in Defence of the Reich, dislikes the uncouth Nazi barbarians who rule the Fatherland. As for his writing, it's smooth as always, but the glibness he displays in his spy novels here becomes an unsettling detachment as he describes the dismemberment, disembowelment, and disintegration of characters with whom the reader has just spent the last several hundred pages.

Here, it marvelously demonstrates an intimate connection that counterbalances the faceless anonymity of aerial warfare. By subscribing to Pushkin+ or purchasing an audiobook, you are agreeing to be bound by Pushkin’s Terms of Service and Privacy Policies and to be added to Pushkin’s mailing list.

This is one of the functions of art, after all: to help us envision what would normally be lost to us. The story revolves around the men who fly the heavy British bombers, the men on the ground in Germany who must deal with the carnage of the bombs, and the German airmen and radar men who try to stop the bombers short of their tragic attack.Fellow pilot Unteroffizier Christian Himmel is outraged to learn that Luftwaffe doctors are participating in Nazi human experimentation on concentration camp inmates. On this raid, the scout plane is shot down and its flares released short of the intended target, on the innocuous little town of Altgarten — of no military significance. A book that you develop an emotional chord for as you read it--perhaps this is why it is hard to let these works go into cardboard boxes and out on a curb. It may come across as a bit dated, but in reality it is a superb account of aerial combat and the people whose lives depended upon it.

This is not a thriller, but, as he describes it, a story about how the war machine chews up people and throws out bodies. And, just like the Blitz in London and other English cities (43,000 civilians dead), the attacks had exactly the opposite effect. Instead of being a realistic story about the life on a bomber during WW2, it was a book written for the American military. This is an astonishingly accomplished piece of writing that kept me gripped for all of its 21 hours. This copy is from the comprehensive James Bond collection of Ian Fleming bibliographer Jon Gilbert, with his bookplate and pencilled note.The bombers being British, the raid is a night-time one; the Americans who carried out daylight raids are not even mentioned by Deighton. Neither are the citizens without flaws, as they funnel stolen and looted goods into their own pockets. This fictional book above all others I have read concerning the RAF strategic bombing offensive, highlights the sheer bravery of RAF airmen who ran the gaunlet of the most sophisticated air defence system of it's time. The classic novel of the Second World War that relates in devastating detail the 24-hour story of an allied bombing raid. Lambert is also connived against by an ambitious officer (who did go to the right school), who wants to poach the aircrew he has trained.

But what is hardest of all to understand is that these raids were launched to weaken the will of their enemies in Germany and Japan. Deighton has never surpassed himselfIf the main text is chillingly effective, then the Epilogue is a heart stopper.Told through the eyes of ordinary people in the air and on the ground – from a young pilot to the inhabitants of a small town in the Ruhr – Bomber is an unforgettable portrayal of individuals caught up in the wreckage of war. Thankfully, Bomber livens up a bit once the planes are airborne, about halfway through the five hundred pages.