The Naked Virgin

About the Book

DAMNATION! Thus Admiral “Muddy” Waters, famed of WWII, the old man’s horizons dark. His worthily sought Pentagon Corridor, a modest length of its E-ring dedicated to the display of his memorabilia, going nowhere. Hell’s Bells! Even as they heap honors on that pompous ass Doug MacArthur who let his planes be caught on the ground at Clark Field. Stalled too, the Navy’s mighty Sea Eagle program, heralded as answering the challenge of the nuclear submarine. Even Muddy’s courtship of Tessa Morgan, widow of his Academy classmate, is shadowed by Tessa’s son whose light, qouth his mother, ought not be hid nder a bushel basket. Alas, poor Muddy! Wherever he looks, seeing a world blighted by too sparing an application of bushel baskets. Muddy’s vexation is tinged with irony, for Tessa’s David, his Civil Service career unnotable save for a fateful squeamishness towards Government, and a rare grasp of sound in the sea, is destined to be drawn into the shenanigans of forces contending in Washington’s noxious air. Yet the Laws of Physics have tolled. Muddy, gallant, scruples of another age, stands athwart History in refusing to concede the Ascendancy of the Nuclear Submarine. He has lots of company.

About the Author

The author, Bob Smith, a former U.S. Navy Captain, who once drove destroyers for a living, has written extensively on Defense, and four times was awarded the Naval Institute’s Gold Medal. Recently he has turned to his first love, which is fiction, garnering scatterings of minor awards in contests of no renown.