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The Command | 
 enlarge | Author: David Poyer
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Category: Book
List Price: $24.95
Buy Used: $0.12
You Save: $24.83 (100%)
New (9) Used (36) Collectible (3) from $0.12
Rating:  9 reviews
Sales Rank: 931049
Media: Hardcover
Edition: First
Pages: 400
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.5
Dimensions (in): 9.6 x 6.4 x 1.3
ISBN: 0312318367
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780312318369
ASIN: 0312318367
Publication Date: June 1, 2004
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
After receiving the Congressional Medal of Honor for action in Iraq, Commander Daniel V. Lenson's new orders read: take over as skipper of USS Thomas W. Horn. His mission: prepare the Tomahawk-equipped strike destroyer and her crew for the Red Sea, where she'll join an international task force searching for weapons of mass destruction.
But this will be no routine deployment. Horn will be the first US Navy warship ever to deploy with an integrated male and female crew-a controversial and politically explosive experiment that will raise questions about morale, behavior, training, sexual attraction, and ultimately, performance under fire. Facing sandstorms, smugglers, and ambushes, Horn's increasingly polarized crew will conduct demanding, diplomatically sensitive search-and-seizure operations against foreign vessels attempting to smuggle arms to Iraq. But the real nightmare's brewing in Bahrain. There, the most dangerous bomb expert in Al-Qaeda has targeted Horn for attack- as the first step in a plan to redraw the map of the whole Middle East.
With gripping action scenes and an explosive climax, The Command continues Dan Lenson's star-crossed career in a series that explores both global and deeply personal implications of honor, duty, power, and war.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 4 more reviews...
 Command September 8, 2008
Thomas E. Doggett
I have only read a few pages of it so far, but it warms the coccles of an old Naval Officer's heart and brings back many memories.
Tom
We need a hero June 8, 2007
Jack Winter (Clearwater, FL)
You want to cheer for protagist Dan Lenson, but the author has made his flaws so overwhelming you keep thinking, "this guy is a schmuck!" On the other hand, Commander Dan, toiling in a Navy so flawed you wonder how they can float a conoe, always comes through in the crisis. The writing is compelling, however dark, and I continue to read every novel in the series.
Great Lenson novel April 16, 2006
Rottenberg's rotten book review (nyc)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
In "Command" DC Poyer has finally elevated Dan Lenson - the luckless but never feckless USN Career officer-hero of his books - to a genuine command. Previoulsy, Lenson had near commands of other ships and, in "China Sea", center-seated an obsolete destroyer on a covert sea war against modern-day pirates of the Pacific. In "Command", it's 1992, and Lenson masters a Tomahawk-armed missile destroyer, the USS Horn. With a mixed-gender crew, the Horn is something of a social-experiment at sea. Sent to mideastern waters to enforce the post-Desert Storm blockade against Saddam Hussein, Lenson will contend with smugglers and terrorists as well as more internal threats - vague ROE, friction caused by the presence of women aboard and outright hostility from colleagues. Unfortunately for Dan, his immediate supervisor is Admiral Niles - his boss from "Tomahawk". Though African-American, Niles has some intolerant views on women in combat - and considering the bad terms with which he and Dan parted ways, Niles's position bodes poorly for Lenson & The Horn. Following form from his other books, Poyer adds depth to his depiction of sea-life by creating a coterie of lower-echelon crewmembers whose lives will run parallel the intrigue of the larger story - from women sailors aboard the Horn to an American Muslim who runs investigations for NCIS in Bahrain. Departing from the other books, Poyer also gives us the terrorists themselves - especially a Sunni doctor who constructs especially deadly bombs for a certain, never-named organization (though we can guess) that cut its teeth driving the Soviets out of Afghanistan, and now may have Dan's new command in his sites. Lenson must balance these threats/issues while running Horn on a mission that includes blockade enforcement and possible attacks on Iraq.
This is great stuff - it's not quite as unpredictable as "China Sea", but we see more of the crew's private lives than we had in other books. Poyer drops details from his other books, though they seem extraneous - neither advancing the plot nor hindering it for those who haven't read them. Though sometimes seeming abbreviated, Poyer still writes a meatier naval technothriller than anybody else. Poyer isn't afraid of using flawed, sometimes unlikable characters plagued by self-doubt and lacking cutting-edge technology - though "Command" actually gives us some techno-wizardry without getting in the way of our characters' personality.
If "Command" has a flaw, it's that it creates too many threads without resolving them. More any other Poyer book, it looks needlessly unfinished.
On the water, where he belongs. February 19, 2006
John Bowes (Oxford, MA USA)
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
Lenson is back in fine shape. A timely tale, well told. Here's hoping more will follow.
 Will Dan Lenson go ashore? January 25, 2006
John Bonavia (Needham, MA USA)
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
Back to Captain Dan Lenson and the destroyers - terrorist plots in the Middle East - good stuff, as always. But...couple of thoughts: Dan is in command of a rather old Spruance class ship: could it be that these are the ones Poyer knows in detail, and since he left the Navy he has no way to keep up with the newer classes? He won't be able to keep the Spruance thing going for long,they're starting to be scrapped! [EDIT 4/21/2008- Thanks to an alert commenter who points out that Poyer does in fact know the newer Perry class.]
It's a good story, except right at the end, I felt he underplayed the effect of the nuclear blast - could the ship really have survived at all? And what about the heavy doses of radiation, his and others? And what was going to happen to the fallout plume? that stuff drifts....
I think he set Dan up for a desk job - or maybe no more jobs! Dan's marriage is going away if he stays at sea, that's for sure.
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