HONOR BOUND

Cletus Frade is an agent with the OSS.

The precursor to the modern CIA, the Office of Strategic Services is the organization ordered by Franklin Roosevelt in the days before the Second World War and created by William "Wild Bill" Donovan. Pulled from all areas and fields, though largely military, the OSS was not directly answerable to any one branch of the military and as such could and often did go its own ways. Its goals, though, were essentially the same as the armed forces intelligence services: fight the enemies of the country. Where the military usually had battle lines drawn, the OSS went deep into enemy territory to spy, subjorn insurrection, sabotage, and disrupt the infrastructure of the other side.

While the largest attention was paid to Europe and the Pacific where Germany, Italy, and Japan were located, there were other hot spots around the world that the Axis was touching and trying to bring under its control. South America was one such area, a huge landmass filled with resources desperately needed for the war effort and close enough to the United States to be a future staging point. But without limitless abilities, the U.S. and its Allies could not give it the attention it undoubtedly deserved.

Which is how a young, 22-year-old Marine First Lieutenant named Cletus Frade, Clete to his friends, came to be one of a very small handful of agents plucked from the war effort and moved to Argentina. Frade was a New Orleans boy for as long as he could remember, raised by his Uncle Jim. When the War started, he volunteered and was quickly a member of the small but growing Marine Air Group. He was young but he was good and before he was pulled from combat flying off a carrier near Guadalcanal, he had shot down over a dozen enemy planes and earned two Distinguished Flying Cross citations.

He would have been happy to continue flying missions and risking his life in the air but Fate, and Wild Bill Donovan, had other plans. The new job that would change his life came when he was pulled back to the States, ostensibly to be part of a War Bond Heroes tour but really to meet and be judged by a Colonel Graham for a mission to the flip side of the Western Hemisphere, Argentina and an ever growing series of missions meant to keep that region out of the hands of the enemy.

Frade would not be alone in this job but he would definitely be the leader of the action.

Suggestion to readers everywhere - when you want to read a history book on World War II that is never dry, never boring, never filled with uninteresting facts, all you have to do is pick up a Griffin novel about that time. It is certain to be packed with fascinating characters, often nerve-wracking suspence, action and mayhem galore, and so much history you feel you are there, just a lot safer.

I am a big W.E.B.Griffin fan. I have all his books and have been reading him for a couple of decades, not just his spy novels but also many of his other series, especially the Badge of Honor series. I really enjoy him a lot and the fact that he has given us such a great look back into the world of espionage in a part of the world we do not think about that much when we consider WWII is a huge plus for me.

In this series, Clete Frade is the main character without a doubt but there are so many others that you meet, get to know, sometimes lose and other times breath a huge sigh of relief about. The books are never boring. Long, of course, like all Griffin novels, but never boring.