I do not know how he did it, but Carrol managed to make Tomcat aviators in Key West boring. The flat prose from the first book is back and worse, and with more female characters the narrator struggles to perform. After a cheap knock off of Top Gun, it is forgotten to give us a reason to care about the central mystery and conflict. Lazy stereotypes from both sides of different fences are used rather than develop any characters we might want to hear from and get to know.