Williams, David. Atlantic Convoy.

Williams' novel was self-billed at the time of its 1979 publication as a thriller, but in reality is a tepid, overly plot-complicated rehash of the North Atlantic convoy genre. His focus is a Sept. 1942 eastbound convoy traveling to Britain with wartime supplies desperately needed for that island nation's continued survival. Unfortunately the author chooses to tell his story from far too many viewpoints. On the good guys side we hear from actual participants in the convoy (seamen, ship masters, the convoy commodore), their U.S. and British protectors (from both sea and air) and from British Admiralty officials plotting the convoys eastbound movements. Representing Nazi Germany are U-boat captains and crew, Luftwaffe aviators, military planners in France (for u-boats) and Norway (aviation), evil Gestapo agents and even a German spy traveling aboard one of the convoy's Liberty ships as wireless operator. Add lackluster writing into the stew and you've got a work of fiction that only the most diehard convoy fiction enthusiast will embrace.