The Saboteurs

A Men at War Novel

By: W. E. B. Griffin, William E. Butterworth IV

Narrated by: James Naughton

Length: 8 hrs and 28 mins

Publisher's summary

Griffin fans have waited years for the return of his rousing stories of the OSS, and now, at last, aided and abetted by his son, William E. Butterworth IV, Griffin has brought back his iconoclastic heroes in a brand-new adventure.

The Battle of the Atlantic is at its peak. Packs of German U-boats are hunting down and sinking U.S. supply ships, and ships are being burned at their moorings in U.S. ports, is it accident or is it sabotage? Meanwhile, Allied forces are secretly preparing to invade first Sicily and then Italy. As the war heats up, Wild Bill Donovan's agents, answerable only to the president, find themselves battling on two fronts at once, and fate is just about to deal them a surprise.

Brimming with action, character, and the deep understanding of the military heart and mind that have made Griffin's books so outstanding, The Saboteurs is irresistible storytelling from a master of the craft.

©2006 W.E.B. Griffin (P)2006 Penguin Audio, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

Critic reviews

"Readers who have a strong interest in WWII home-front history should be satisfied." (Publishers Weekly)

need more

Would you consider the audio edition of The Saboteurs to be better than the print version?

yes

What did you like best about this story?

charactera

What does James Naughton bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

he was much better than the previous reader

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

yes

Any additional comments?

too much of the book is given to setting what happened in previous books, I would concider at least half the book was a re-hash. the parts that were not a re-hash were vary good

Not a fan of the music

The story was great but the music during the beginning and end of each chapter is horrible

NOT YOUR VINTAGE GRIFFIN

The addition of mood music is distracting and detracts from the flow of the story.

Disappointing Abridgement

I thought: "Well, even an abriged WEB is better than none." After listening, I'm not so sure. There are gaping holes in the plot, and I'd like to have found out how the final chapter of the adventure came out.

Also, there were some surprising research errors (like having a character carrying a .357 revolver--I believe this pistol was a creature of the '50s and not a WW II weapon).

The loud music overlaid upon the narration at the beginning of many chapters drove me nuts. I had to turn my car stereo up to "boom box" levels to hear the narration over the music and road noise.

Still . . . It was a W E B Griffin (& Son) novel, and that can't be all bad.

I'm not sure it was worth the wait

If you have been a fan of the Men at War series since back in the day, you may be a little disappointed in this offering.

I guess it would depend on exactly what you are expecting. For some strange reason, I expected the story to pick up where we left off with Canidy and Fulmar escaping from Hungary, Jimmy in the Philippines, and Bitter and Douglass, Jr. working on the Aphrodite project. I guess it did but it was just a little off. Jimmy and Douglass, Jr. were mentioned in passing but Bitter didn’t exist at all. What about the new young pilot character, Darmstardt, that he spent so much time developing in the last book? He also fell off of the face of the earth. I was also not happy with the personality transplant that some of the characters seemed to undergo during the interim.

Now for the story. It was a good story and very plausible. There were a couple of glaring editing mistakes where characters have information that they were never given. There was also time spent introducing a character that never appeared. It makes you wonder if he was edited out and they forgot to go back and clean up the foreshadowing. I also didn’t like the whole Anne Chambers side story. That was not well written.

All in all if you are a longtime fan you may be disappointed. Hopefully this new “team” will get better with the next installment.

There's got to be a pony in here somewhere!

What a disappointment! I have enjoyed every W.E.B. Griffin book that I have read or listened to. I anticipated this one greatly. Once I started trying to listen to this recording, though, I was really put off by the lousy production. The writing was probably excellent, and the narration was good--when the producer let you hear it. The wretched, loud, and unnecessary music at the beginning of chapters was awful. To add to the distraction, there were sound effects (ships horns, etc.) that were just silly. What's next? Maybe a scratch-and-sniff card that you send out to add to the experience? Good writers like Griffin don't need to have their stuff turned into audio comic books.

Ruined book

Bad sound effects and over loud music essentially ruined the book! The first W.E.B Griffin book I didn’t enjoy.

No more music!

I want to listen to the book being read not the narrator being drowned out by orchestral music. That totally ruined it for me. The story itself is good, have read it before but the extra stuff was horrible.