In Poyer’s latest, a war winds down
In “Violent Peace,” the 20th Dan Lenson thriller from David Poyer, the world war with China and its allies is wrapping up, but there are hot spots on the globe where cease-fire directions either weren’t received or weren’t obeyed. Tense but necessary multinational peace talks are underway. Some vital U.S. allies want territory, compensation and specific individuals tried for war crimes despite China’s attempts to minimize its responsibility for starting the war. Meanwhile, the Chinese dictator most responsible for hostilities is missing and possibly being sheltered by the Russians, who’ve joined the U.S. and its allies only at the last hour of hostilities and still expect equal concessions.
And Dan Lenson, having been temporarily promoted to rear admiral, is on a battered motorcycle searching for his daughter (an immunologist) in the Western U.S., amid the horrific aftermath of a nuclear exchange.
He’s back for another fastpaced adventure — “Violent Peace” being an apt name, as this awful conflict, covered in the series’ most recent installments including “Overthrow: The War with China and North Korea” (2019), is reaching a very sloppy ending. One of Poyer’s trademarks is to transport the reader from the highest strategic levels (peace negotiations and presidential maneuvering) to the tactical level (the bridge of a warship or a raggedy rebel squad setting an ambush). Lenson’s wife, Blair, has been working at the strategic level, and is finding out that her trusted status as a member of the opposition party brought into a bipartisan War Cabinet is reaching the end of its shelf life: Partisan politics is ramping right back up as the war winds down.
Subplots from previous books in the series are also winding down at the tactical (and personal) level, so we revisit Marine Hector Ramos, who saw the worst of vicious man/ machine combat and now suffers crippling depression and PTSD. Ramos is directionless and adrift back in the shadow of an Eastern Shore poultry processing plant, missing his comrades and pre-war sweetheart, but arguably better off than former SEAL Teddy Oberg.
Oberg has endured pain and injury, and has sacrificed enough for 20 service members, but continuing his tactical mission against the Chinese may jeopardize U.S. strategic objectives.
Cheryl Staurulakis, a Lenson protégé and temporary captain, is on the bridge of a new version of the USS Savo Island in receipt of ambiguous orders to confront a Russian task force intending to seize a Chinese port unless somehow turned away.
The fate of her husband, a pilot shot down early in the war, is on her mind as she tries to assemble a hasty defense of the Tsushima Strait, site of a 1905 battle in the Russo-Japanese war.
Poyer, a prolific Eastern Shore author, has sailed these waters before. Detractors find his characters thin, and his plots sometimes stretch belief. Another view is that few practitioners of this genre can blend the “deck plates perspective” of an old salt with a “future war” conducted in every physical dimension that stretches the imagination. Regardless, Poyer has a couple quirks that frequent readers will recognize: a habit of “verbing” nouns (“he valved some coffee into his cup”), and making up odd-sounding character surnames such as Ffoulk (a lieutenant killed in a previous book) and recurring characters surnamed Salyers, Yangerhans and Staurulakis.
“Violent Peace,” a good read, ties up most of the loose ends of Poyer’s War with China series, and he sets up the next book, with hints strongly suggesting a confrontation in the Arctic.