Twelve Seconds To Live

The book's title comes from the ominous whirr given off by Second World War mines when their fuses have been activated. Once the noise begins, you have precisely 12 seconds to stop it or die. For a small group serving in the Special Countermeasures section of the Royal Navy, that sound is something they live with daily. Few people would be skilful or desperate enough to perform their job, but these are brave, lonely men with something to prove to themselves - or perhaps nothing to lose. Their task is to deactivate enemy mines at sea and on land, and the booby-traps built into some of these bombs simply make the task more dangerous than it otherwise would be. Once again Douglas Reeman (who also writes historical seafaring fiction under the name Alexander Kent) has created a humdinger of a thriller. In prose that at times borders on the terse, he weaves a clever plot and series of sub-plots around these professionals, who all have hang-ups and painful memories. There is Lt-Commander David Masters, a former submarine captain who lost his ship to a mine. Now he teaches reckless 'pupils' about deactivation, and has seen many of them die. There is also Lt Chris Foley, trapped with a mine close to enemy territory, and Sub-Lt Michael Lincoln who fears exposure as a coward. Douglas Reeman has written more than 50 novels - 30-odd of them under his own name and the rest as Alexander Kent. A veteran of wartime convoys across the Atlantic and Arctic oceans, he is able to write with feisty realism about those times and the mood of sailors who risked all they had. (Kirkus UK)