Reeman, Douglas The Pride and the Anguish.

This maritime novel about the 1942 fall of Singapore is concerned chiefly with military activities of the Royal Navy officers and crew of a small British gunboat, the H.M.S. PORCUPINE, which had been dispatched from the rivers of China to Singapore in 1941 after the Japanese overran the Chinese mainland. Reeman’s tale is a gripping story – and an angry one, at that. He highlights the British military and civilian bungling in Malaya and Singapore which played such a decisive role in the area’s devastating fall to Japanese troops during the period November 1941 through Feb. 1942. His descriptions of Singapore’s final hours are particularly well rendered. The novel’s final chapters make for an exciting read when the PORCUPINE and a sister ship, loaded with civilians and naval personnel, escape as the last vessels out of Singapore before the city comes under total Japanese control and then head for the safety of Java, 500 miles by sea distant. From there it’s a nail-biter of an ending as the two small ships, built for river service, endure rough ocean seas and a Japanese navy all-out search for the British escapees.