Caught In The Crossfire
Drake's collection of shorter stories about his best-known creation, the futuristic tank mercenary band Hammer's Slammers, may overlap here and there with the contents of other collections, but altogether it constitutes an excellent place to get acquainted with the Slammers. Two of the pieces in it are actually short novels: "The Warrior," featuring the perpetually victorious but perpetually insubordinate Slick Des Grieux, and "Counting the Cost," yet another take on the Nika Riots in sixth-century Constantinople, with a Slammer officer shamelessly cast in the role of the historic Count Belisarius. "The Interrogation Team" and "Caught in the Crossfire" in many ways better represent Drake at his best, though, and "The Immovable Object" finds him skillfully handling ethnic brawling and offering a surprise ending. The stories all boast high body counts, but they also let us see Drake developing them from pure hardware-and-gore exercises to more character-centered fiction over the course of some 10 years of writing about the Slammers--and the action scenes are good throughout.Roland Green