MacArthur Must Die — Ian Slater

The bestselling author of WW III Wonderful, one of the great suspense stories of World War II —Clive Cussler Set during World War II, MacArthur Must Die is a what-if thriller in the great tradition of Eye of the Needle and The Eagle Has Landed, centering on a Japanese assassination plot against General Douglas MacArthur. It is 1942 and Japan owns the Pacific. The speed with which the Japanese have captured vast territories in a few months makes the Nazi Blitzkrieg look plodding by comparison. Hundreds of thousands are taken prisoner as Americans in the Philippines and the British in Singapore are forced to surrender, and President Roosevelt orders MacArthur to escape from the Philippines to Australia, from where he can launch a counter-offensive—hence MacArthur's famous promise, I shall return. But what if the Japanese have no intention of allowing MacArthur to return to the Philippines or anywhere else within their freshly consolidated empire? And War Minister Tojo orders that MacArthur be assassinated: MacArthur Must Die. The ingenious assassination plot—involving a submarine-launched, bomb-laden Kamikaze aircraft—is created in vivid, hair-raising detail while the action unfolds against a backdrop of dramatic historical events in the Pacific Theater of Operations that will place the reader convincingly close to the most devastating blow imaginable to the allied cause in the Pacific during World War II. A high-noon shootout in downtown Brisbane, which produces a denouement straight out of Higgin's The Eagle Has Landed. As a native of his narrative's Australian setting, Slater is [also] able to offer flashes of local color. —Kirkus Reviews