LTC Lenson's diaspora scrabbles across the rocky deserts of Iraq only to slosh trough the sewers of Bagdad. Poyer's warts-and-all portrait of personal and military ethics brings the combat experience into fine focus.
While BLACK STORM is set in the closing moments before the allied invasion of Iraq it is not a history lesson. BLACK STORM reads the tea leaves of tomorrows headlines. Read this book before some Hollywood hack neuters it for the screen.
Poyer is a master of claustrophobic conditions, whether underwater or in tight conditions like the sewers of Baghdad. Even in desert Iraq Poyer manages to find underwater(!) action (cf. his Tiller Galloway novels). Otherwise, the presence of navy man Lenson is hard to explain, and is something Dan also has to essay several times during the story itself (harking back to his work in TOMAHAWK). One disconcerting stylistic quirk is that Lenson finds time to ruminate on profound qualms of war and humanity even while in mortal danger during a fire fight in an underground weapons bunker ("when is counter-aggression more dangerous than the aggressor?"). Serious consideration of such thoughts, however, is what make Poyer's stories so different from mere technothrillers or the ordinary run of war novels. He truly is an excellent writer, psychologically acute and able to evoke just the atmosphere he wants, however much mainstream reviewers may ignore his military genre.
