Victory and Honor

By: W. E. B. Griffin

Narrated by: Scott Brick

Length: 9 hrs and 48 mins

Publisher's summary

The spectacular new book in New York Times best-selling author W.E.B. Griffin's Honor Bound saga of World War II espionage.

Wars come to an end. But then new ones begin. Just weeks after Hitler's suicide, Cletus Frade and his colleagues in the OSS find themselves up to their necks in battles every bit as fierce as the ones just ended. The first is political - the very survival of the OSS, with every department from Treasury to War to the FBI grabbing for its covert agents and assets. The second is on a much grander scale: the possible next world war, against Joe Stalin and his voracious ambitions.

To get a jump on the latter, Frade has been conducting a secret operation, one of great daring - and great danger - but to conduct it and not be discovered, he and his men must walk a perilously dark line. One slip, and everyone becomes a casualty of war.

©2011 W.E.B. Griffin (P)2011 Penguin Audio

not much of a story

I was really surprised how much I did NOT like this Novel. Lots of characters- lots of talking- lots of tie-ins with historical facts... very few of which led to anything. After about 4 hours you are really wondering if there is any plot to this at all. When it finally looks like you figured out what the plot is... that plot line is ruled out and are again left to wonder why am I listening to this. I finished it just to see why the book was written.In the last hour or so it somewhat comes together but not worth the time or a credit. In fact, I wouldn't recommend listening to it even if it were free. Blah Blah Blah... oh, I zoned out. Let me rewind to see what I missed. No, didn't miss anything.

No mas Argentina!

While I like the author’s Argentina “Honor” series very much overall, the story lines have gotten pretty thin and it’s probably time to put the old girl to rest. Victory and Honor is #6 in the series about O.S.S. operations in WWII South America. While the war ended sometime in #5, for some reason, the story continues into this volume….. and the next – I see #7, Empire and Honor just got published. This all seems to be about the author providing a writing career for his son, listed as a co-author on all Griffin series for the last few years. Even the WWII USMC series continues on into the Korean War. When will it all end? Who knows? Who cares? Suffice it to say, I’m already pot-committed, I.e. I’m all in, as are thousands of other Griffin fans. We keep buying the books because it’s very much like reading letters about family and old friends – you want to know what happens to them, however mundane and trivial. He brilliantly tosses in a few morsels of new info amid the pages and pages of chronicling daily life. For example, I became very happy when Griffin finally had the Navy dock Cletus Frade’s pay for the chronograph watch he never turned in after returning from Guadalcanal three years earlier in the story. And an even bigger nugget, he referenced the only crossover character in all of Griffin’s books, I.e. Lt. Colonel Clyde W. Dawkins – WOW! That’ll make the Griffin geeks keep coming back for more. I would never suggest anyone read a Griffin book as a stand-alone – it’s really about the journey and understanding the Griffin formula. On to Empire and Honor to find out what Cletus Frade is having for breakfast…..

Lacking atmosphere

I was disappointed with this book. There is a lot of dialogue but at the expense of any feel for the period or locations. Where there are descriptions, these are often repeated. It just felt that it was guys taking off and landing in planes but with no sense of distance travelled. All in all I found it one dimensional and at times confusing.

A little far fetched

Of course, with these writers, all the heroes are independently wealthy. A lot of high end hotels, drinking and fornicating. But, no smoking. We can’t have that. Although, everyone did.

Some technical mistakes also. Jimmy Stewart didn’t fly B17’s. He flew the much understated and Hollywood hated B24.

But, it’s a story.

Entertaining if you don’t know history or care.

Series has become too Commercial

What should have been one book has been broken up into several so each could be charged for. The previous ones at least has a reasonable ending but this one just stopped midstream.
That being said, they are still enjoyable.

Faster Moving than Most Griffin Novels

In this shortest volume of the Honor Bound series, W.E.B. Griffin brings his story to the end of World War II and begins a transition into the postwar world for his intelligence officers. The OSS is about to be disbanded, its operatives and assets divided among the FBI and the military intelligence units. This causes difficulties for the heroes of the series because they have been involved in an operation that they never reported to William Donovan, head of the OSS, because they believed he would feel honor bound to report on their actions to FDR and then a priceless intelligence opportunity would be lost. The opportunity is to find out about Soviet spies throughout the U.S. including in the Manhattan Project—a circumstance which many of FDR’s top people naively believe couldn’t happen because the Soviets were allies. The price of this information is to smuggle into Argentina many German families and in a few cases, Nazi officials. It’s this latter part of the deal that is causing the difficulties now as the Secretary of State has his own intelligence suggesting that Nazis have gotten into Argentina (many did outside of this very limited program) and he is trying to get those responsible for getting them there.

I have mixed feelings about this book. I understand the deal that was made and why it was necessary, but I also was totally uncomfortable with our heroes working to help Nazis and justifying it. It’s ugly and it weakens my support for the heroes. The truth is, I wouldn’t have minded them being exposed and suffering the consequences for their actions. However well intentioned they were, they knew they were not acting with the support of their superiors and in fact, thought their superiors might shut them down.

That being said, it’s an exciting novel and moved faster than is often the case in a W.E.B. Griffin book.