Rating: 
Summary: Compelling and fast-paced.
Review: The best novel I've read in some time. I almost missed this book, as I typically think of Katzenbach as a sort of schlocky thriller writer (no offense; that's not meant as an insult). He's written something deeper, better, more meaningful and complex here; yet it's still a tremendously fast-paced thriller and engaging mystery. I found myself casting the movie in my head. The book is an engaging and descriptive war novel, and the characters are well-developed, if predictable (the heroic black soldier, the brilliant, aging English barrister who loves his tea, the creepy one-armed Luftwaffe (Gestapo?) Hauptmann). My only criticism is that the escape scenes, while compelling, seem to be right out of the movies, right down to the details (multiple tunnels and tugs on a rope as a signal). I found myself looking for Bronson, Garner and McQueen. Wasn't there any other way out of a German POW camp? Still, this is the first book in awhile that I'm making a point of passing around to my friends. Very, very good.
Rating: 
Summary: As the cliche goes, I did not want to put this book down!
Review: I picked up this book at the airport based only on the blurb on the cover, which is typically not the best way to find a winner. It seemed to start pretty slow, while Katzenbach spent a lot of time developing the characters, but there came a point when the book turned very exciting, and I couldn't wait to see what would happen next. Several times I had to fight the urge to jump ahead to the next page or next chapter wondering how things would play out. This was a book that I read primarily at the gym on the stationary bike, and as I got more and more into the book, my workouts kept getting longer and longer. I have to find more books that keep me this entertained and interested. All the characters, while stuck in the same situation, were very different, just as in real life. And the book really brought each of these characters to life also. Unfortunately, I have finished the book, so now I am tasked with finding another equally as entertaining.
Rating: 
Summary: Remember this about the South
Review: I didn't mind the book. It was a page turner and it was well-enough plotted, even if the characters were rather flat. Please remember this about the South...This goes to the author and especially to his editors. Y'all is a contraction for you and all. All being the operative word here. It is used in a plural context. No Southerner refers to only one person as y'all...Southerners simply use "you" like the rest of America. Y'all is used to include any number from 2 or more. I didn't mind the stereotyping nearly as much as the improperly used y'all.
Rating:
Summary: Race Relations in a German POW Camp
Review: Tommy Hart, Harvard Law School, is called upon to defend the lone black man in a German POW camp from a charge of murder. How can Americn justice prevail in Nazi Germany? The American soldiers are self-governed (in military fashion) while in camp. The Germans agree to a court-martial, convinced the right man is on trial anyway. All the evidence points to 1st Lt. Lincoln Scott. But Tommy cleaverly uncovers the sub-plot, the reason Lt. Scott has been framed. The trial is a distraction from the greatest prison break ever attempted. I couldn't help but think of the Steve McQueen movie, THE GREAT ESCAPE, as I read HART'S WAR. Perhaps that's what attracted me to it in the first place. It requires full concentration though; keeping the characters' names and German jargon straight is difficult.
Rating:
Summary: A Very Well-Detailed Novel-Worth Reading!
Review: I had been waiting for John Katzenbach's "Hart's War" to be released in paperback edition because I can not afford the hardcover. Please excuse me for being a spendthrifty but I can be smarter because I can buy two or three paperbacks in addition to that book (total of four) to equal the cost of a hardcover book. If you don't wait for that, go on and bother the librarian! So enuff with that! Let me compliment the excellent book by John Katzenbach and he did done the clever way to hook me up reading the "Hart's War" and enjoyed it wholly. It did outcompeted the another John...John Grisham, who is my personal favorite author because I live only 40 minutes from his place and I do know that one of these recent books of his was not that good one! Just find out what I am talking about! John K's characters are well developed and easily to follow throughout the pages and the settings in the concentration camp for POW Allied and British soldiers and the hardships in the camp were properly defined what were actually happened in the World War II. Dark, gloomy, rainy and cold environment in the story attributed the chillness in the plots...remind me not to leave the freezer door open longer than necessary when making the observation to pick something from the cold! The story about Lincoln Scott in the cooler made me wanting to drink something hot because I can felt how cold and how depressing he would be locked in a cell...wet and cold! Tommy Hart, the major character did reminded me about the other men in different courtroom dramas in the books of John Grisham's "Runaway Jury" and "Time to Kill", another John (! ), John Lescroart,"Mercy Rule" and all my favorite books...Richard North Patterson..(not another John! , whew!) Struggling with the ties of legality running with the Law under the limited circumstances like no other resources to help building a case to persecute or to defend. In the concentration camp there were nothing you can get from the Germans and but luckily for Tommy to have the help from Phil and Hugh from the British compounds. I do not want to spill more or I would spoil your hunger to read that book. I highly recommend you to get that book and read it. "Historical thriller...courtroom drama...racial conflict", these words to describe the novel....oh yes they are the best words to tell you what it is about. Check it out!
Rating:
Summary: Terrific book and characters
Review: This is a terrific book. The plot twists are unexpected yet realistic. The characters are multidimensional. It's well-written and a page-turner -- exploring the unusual world of divided loyalties in a World War II German POW camp.
That said, the book has some minor flaws. The Germans would not be so concerned over the death of an American in a POW camp: in real life, Americans could be summarily shot for violations such as looking out of a window at the wrong time. One of the German guard characters is a bit too much like Sergeant Shultz. Throwing bread over the fence is likewise unrealistic. And an air combat kill is scored when an enemy _plane_ is downed, whether or not the pilot is killed.
Rating:
Summary: Katzenbach's novel, "Hart's War" delivers
Review: Young Tommy Hart, who had not yet completed his Harvard law education finds himself in a POW camp, sole survivor of his downed bomber. To help with the boredom of life in camp, he has requested law books that are sent to him from the YMCA and delivered through the Red Cross via Switzerland. (This would appear rather fantastic except that Katzenbach explains in the Author's Notes that his father, a POW during WWII, was able to prepare himself and test out of his junior and senior years at Princeton doing his studying during his imprisonment in just this way.) After a grizzly murder in the American POW camp, a military tribunal is set up to mete out justice. Hart is selected to represent Scott, a Black man whom it appears has committed the murder. Hart has made friends with several British Officers, one who is a well known Criminal Barrister and another who is a Canadian Police Officer. The three work together to prove Scott's innocence. They are thwarted at every turn. Katzenbach is adept at the give and take of the thrill--just when you think Hart has accomplished the impossible, success is snatched away and Scott is once again much closer to a firing squad. Comparisons with the television sitcom, Hogan's Heroes, are inescapable. However, I found descriptions of daily life in the camps brutal, the smells must have been overpowering and living on the edge of starvation a daily challenge. Katzenbach creates nightmare nights complete with German search lights and frightening shadows and the constant threat of discovery as American POWs plot yet another escape. Katzenbach pays particular honor to the Tuskegee airmen in this novel. He handles the racial issues very well, not only racism, but the prejudice the Germans have for the Russians who are in a camp nearby. This book is a very satisfying read. Thank you Mr. Katzenbach for a well crafted and engaging book.
Rating:
Summary: A Decent Attempt at Stalag 17 Meets To Kill A Mockingbird!
Review: Hart's War is an intelligent good read. It is a court room mystery set in a WWII POW camp in Germany. I enjoyed the story and the characters very much. The mystery itself was OK and the resolution of it is OK, not great, not overally memoriable but for genre the book itself is pretty good. The racial aspect of the book is again interesting but again not as good as it could be. The idea was there and some of the execution was there, but its not to the level of a To Kill a Mockingbird or even A Time To Kill. I will not claim to be any sort of WWII POW camp expert. But one of the problems I had with the book was the whole "good german" guard and warden of the camp. To me it gave the book, despite its seriousness, an element of Hogan's heroes. I know that all Germans were not Nazis but two of the main German characters in this book were a little to nice. Also the idea of the camp Gestapo officer testifying and answering questions at a tribunal run by POWs was almost laughable. But maybe I am making too much of what this book is. The book is a good paperback mystery novel. In fact it is above average. But the history teacher in me wanted a little more. Like The War of the Rats which I read before this, I felt this was a good book but not up to the potential book it could have been. Both are good WWII paperbacks for a nice day at the park of the beach but in the end they are forgetable books that will eventually be passed on to a friend or donated to the library.
Rating:
Summary: A Book for All People
Review: Some books try to have "something for everybody", to be "all things to all people". You get the drift, I think. After all, this book is a murder mystery, a coutroom drama, a war story, a prison escape story, a treatise on American race relations at the midpoint of the last century, a study in aging, a commentary on friendship... By all standards it shouldn't work; it's just too ambitious, and--one might suspect--too contrived, maybe too much a movie script marketed to a mass reading audience before going to Hollywood for production into its screen version. And yet, it seems to work! In spite of myself I enjoyed this book. Sure,there's formula; yeah, there are sterotypes (as a Canadian I can certainly say that of at least one of the main characters); for certain, some of the plot is a little too convenient. But in spite of all that the book ultimately entraps you in its web and carries you along, willing or unwilling. I came to care for the characters and their plight. I thought the final chapter a very moving summation of the depth of appreciation that can sometimes be expressed for help voluntarily rendered at a dire time, no strings attached. In the final analysis, it's just a really good story and a pretty good book as well!
Rating:
Summary: More than just murder....
Review: A first-rate blend of murder and trial, laced with racial menace and all the sort of tension inherent in a WWII stalag. Katzenbach's eye for detail is sharp and selective, and the perspective he chooses is one that allows him to maintain a level of suspense which engages the reader right from the start. Very well written indeed, and difficult to put down, once begun.
| 
