The Flight

It is 1994, and retired lieutenant colonel Joseph Kogan, a Vietnam veteran turned aspiring academic, is serenely researching the U.S. defense of the Philippines in World War II when his life is disrupted by a call from the U.S. president, Simon Moody. Stricken by cancer, Moody is desperate for a cure, and believes he has found evidence of one in a letter written by an American doctor stationed in the Philippines during WW II. Kogan is persuaded to take on an unusual assignment. Through the use of a top-secret time-travel machine, so erratic that plans to develop it were scrapped by the Carter administration, Kogan flies back in time to the Philippines in 1942 to search for the cure. Any novel prominently featuring time travel and cancer cures obviously isn't too concerned with adhering to the tenets of realism, but Runyan, also a retired lieutenant colonel and military historian, establishes his wild scenario with as much credibility as can be expected. The protagonist is brave and canny, the foes are nasty, the plot moves at an efficient clip, and the thrills come right on time. (June)