Reeman, Douglas

(British, 1925– )

Reeman was in the Royal Navy during the Second World War, first on a destroyer doing Atlantic convoy duty and later in motor torpedo boats. He then worked as a detective in London before becoming a full-time writer. He has used both experiences to produce thirty (to date) meticulously researched sea-going novels of the Second World War under his own name, and another twenty-one (recounting the adventures of Captain Richard Bolitho in the Napoleonic period) under the pseudonym Alexander Kent. Reeman has neither the flair of a C. S. Forester nor the psychological insight and style of a Patrick O'Brian but his books are exciting and, for the addict, what they arguably lack in literary quality they make up for in sheer quantity.

C S. Forester, Patrick O'Brian, Nicholas Monsarrat  MH