Full Naval Honors (The Honor)
Retirement doesn’t come easy for Admiral Peter Wake. After decades of naval service and intelligence gathering on a global scale, he has finally taken the plunge and retired—or so he thinks. President Theodore Roosevelt, however, has other plans for his old friend, especially since the President wants Wake to run interference ahead of the world cruise by America’s “Great White Fleet.” Wake, his beautiful yet formidable wife Maria, and his old friend and colleague Sean Rork board the liner Siberia, steaming a few weeks ahead of the fleet on its same itinerary. Danger follows the trio, as always, and a host of characters, present and potential enemies, make life interesting for the three Americans.
Even after official retirement, the government occasionally finds a need for Wake’s special talents. A young Franklin Roosevelt, Assistant Secretary of the Navy in 1914, calls on Wake and Rork to investigate secretive German activities on the Central American coast. With World War I looming on the horizon, the mission is a portent of what lies ahead for the United States.
The second half of the book carries the Wake family beyond the admiral’s life and chronicles his children’s and later generations’ exploits in service to the nation and their friends. This portion of the book departs from the first-person style used by Peter Wake in the other novels in the series, with some parts given in the form of official reports, and others as third-person narratives. For those reasons, it lacks the personal feel of other Wake novels, but it provides closure for Wake fans who’ve followed the hero’s exploits through so many volumes and decades.
