Just to be slightly serious for a sec... I bought "Wheels of Terror" back when I was in college, many moons ago, and I've re-read it a couple of times since. It was totally over-the-top and hopelessly unrealistic for the most part, but it had some redeeming features. The scenes of cleaning up after the British air raid seemed like they were written by someone who was there. The chapters on home leave seemed similarly on the mark. The chapter on breaking out through the swamp was also believable.
A few years back I bought "The Bloody Road to Death". It was done by a different translator, and I gave up on it in the first chapter, when the translator was putting Tiny's words into some sort of Cockney lingo. I understood the concept, but it just seemed ludicrous to me.
This past summer I picked it up again, partly because of your posts. I read it through and it wasn't as bad as I thought it was the first time, but it had none of the redeeming features of "Wheels". Mostly it was just silly, especially the stuff about Porta and the bear.
Seems like Hassel, or whatever his real name was, wrote one fairly good novel ("Wheels"), then decided he could spin it off into a franchise, and more power to him if he was able to make a living at it. That's not any easy thing for any writer to do.
Just a few thoughts I thought I pass along.
:laugh:
