Over the Abyss

Rating:
Summary: The Cat Man Cometh.
Review: The phrase is apt because the narrator author has had more lives than the black cat and has seen more than the usual man's share of danger. And he appears to have had all the moves just like the legendary Catwoman.
Starting out as a common soldier in the Bolshevik Army of 1918, he went on to survive the Spanish Civil War, the Stalin purges, and partisan operations in WW II behind the German lines.
This is a fascination memoir and well deserves a place in the collection of the Special Ops aficianado or in the collection of the adventure novel reader. Well worth having.

Rating:
Summary: Inside Soviet mine and booby-trap warfare in WW2
Review: This is a very good partial autobiography of Starinov, gleaned from several books he wrote and one his wife authored, translated and filled out by Suggs, who does a creditable job with the text and his interludes hanging things together where there are gaps. Starinov was apparently one of the Soviet Union's experts on booby traps and mine warfare during much of the thirties and forties. The first half of the book covers the period pre-WW2, the second half the war. In the first half, the author participates in the Russian Civil War, teaches classes in sabotage in the Soviet Union's military schools, serves in the Spanish Civil War, and gets wounded in the Winter War with Finland. The second half is an account of the author's service in WW2, which largely consisted of training personnel who were sent to act as partisans behind German lines. The author's specialty seems to have been destroying trains with mines, and he developed several for this purpose. Overall it's a good book, with much interesting information on the Soviet high command's culture in the 30's and 40's. The only failing of the book is that the lurid cover tells you of the author's participation in LRRP warfare (the term LRRP is used twice) when in fact the author was rarely in combat (and never during WW2) and was mostly concerned with things other than reconnaisance anyway. The cover also says he served in WW1, which is incorrect. If you can accept this one annoyance, the book is quite good, and full of information not elsewhere available.