Last Lift from Crete by Alexander Fuller

Publisher: 262pp £ 16.99 .

This is a rattling good yarn about one of the most courgeous naval operations of the second world war, an imaginative recreation of a real event. Action fills every page as Fullerton’s rapid fire narrative style combines with a vivid sense of detail. The effect on the reader is a clear impression of what life must have been like for naval officers on active service, a matter of first hand experience for the author whose service in submarines inspired his immensely popular first novel - Surface!, 1953. My only criticism would be that so much action limits the depth of his characterisation, but, there again, life was probably like that during the war. - RC