The Good Shepherd / Greyhound

C.S. Forester

Penguin

£12.45

Commander George Krause of the USS Navy is not a charismatic figure. His wife has left him and he’s previously been passed over for promotion. Now, however, Krause is the senior commander of a destroyer escort group responsible for a WW2 convoy of thirty seven merchant ships heading east across the Atlantic. Report of a U-boat sighting plunges him into an unremitting sequence of risk-taking and decision-making as he protects his flock against attack. For forty-eight hours the action is intense and the reader, like Krause, will scarcely have time to gulp a cup of coffee, let alone pay a visit to the heads. A brilliant fictional study of leadership and naval professionalism first published 1955, now a Tom Hanks film.