The Blood Order Jack D. Hunter 1979 Blue Max Sequel Bruno Stachel Aviation Novel

The Blood Order by Jack D. Hunter is a 1979 historical thriller and the sequel to the author's celebrated 1964 aviation novel The Blue Max, continuing the story of the First World War German flying ace Bruno Stachel into the interwar years and the rise of the Nazi party. This copy was published by Times Books, a division of Quadrangle / The New York Times Book Co., New York, with simultaneous Canadian publication by Fitzhenry & Whiteside of Toronto, copyright 1979 by Jack D. Hunter. It is the second printing of September 1979, ISBN 0-8129-0820-1, Library of Congress catalog number 78-20687.

In The Blood Order, Hunter returns to Bruno Stachel, the ambitious and morally complicated fighter pilot of The Blue Max, and carries him forward from the celebrated hero of the Great War into the treacherous politics of post-war Germany. Stachel accepts a position in the newly forming Luftwaffe under the Nazi regime, is awarded the party's "Blood Order," and becomes entangled with leading figures of the era, including Hermann Göring, even as the brutality of the movement he has joined becomes impossible to ignore. The novel follows his passage from decorated airman to a man caught in a dangerous position, and works through themes of power, corruption, ideology, and personal honor in the Germany of the 1930s as a second world war approaches. It belongs to the genres of historical fiction, thriller, and aviation fiction, the field in which Hunter made his name.

Jack D. Hunter (1921 to 2009) was an American novelist, journalist, and former army counter-intelligence agent whose best-known work, The Blue Max, was published in 1964 and adapted into the 1966 film of the same name, one of the most admired aviation pictures ever made, with its vivid portrayal of the German air service of the First World War. Hunter drew on a lifelong fascination with the period and its aircraft, and the Stachel novels remain favorites among readers who value fiction rooted in the history of military aviation. As a sequel bridging the two world wars through the eyes of a First World War ace, The Blood Order holds particular interest for readers and collectors drawn to the Blue Max and to German aviation history.

The book is a hardcover, rebound in blue library boards by the Heckman Bindery of North Manchester, Indiana, with a bindery date stamp of March 1981, and is an ex-library copy, the spine lettered in gilt "BLOOD ORDER / HUNTER." Condition is good and sound: the boards are clean with light shelf wear, the text block is tight and complete, and the binding is firm, with the bindery label and usual markings associated with former library use.

For the reader and collector, The Blood Order offers the further adventures of one of the most memorable characters in aviation fiction, continuing the story begun in The Blue Max into a darker and more politically fraught era. It will appeal to admirers of Jack D. Hunter, to collectors of aviation and military fiction, and to those interested in novels set against the history of Germany between the wars.