What distinguishes Bomber, Len Deighton's novel about the RAF, from the many other stories I have read about the airmen in World War II, is its involvement with both sides: opposed are seven hundred British bombers directed at the heavy industry in the Ruhr, and the German night fighters and antiaircraft crews who plot to intercept them. Involved also, and punishingly, are the German civilians in the medieval town of Altgarten, which, through the force of the wind and the fault of the crews sent to place the incandescent markers, became the innocent victims. There is no protection for anyone in this compelling, skillful story, not for the fliers who are being shot at, not for the Burgomaster and his guests who are celebrating his birthday, and not for the reader. What holds one fast is Mr. Deighton's surpassing knowledge of machines, his breathless "sweating out" of the raid, and his vital, compassionate characterization of the men who fly, and of the women, children, and elders who are hurt. (pp. 123-24)

The novelist is not sparing in his detail; the suspense and the suffering in this book would be unbearable were it not for his ability to light up the lives of those he writes about…. At each station there is a protagonist through whose reaction and remonstrance we are made sensitive to the others who must brave death….

Through these three men, strangers, of course, to each other, through the men who serve them and the women who love them, one feels the common link of courage, loyalty, and desperation with which they are sustained. They are the pygmy heroes. And the machines they command—which eventually command them—are the villains.

August's son is fighting on the Eastern front, and when asked by his dearest friend whether the boy hates it, August replies, "Max, my friend, I have to tell you he likes it. We have given our world to our children. Can we be surprised that these children are destructive … and wreak havoc upon the world that it's taken us old men so long to put together?" There is the theme: the devastation of machines and the decency powerless to bring them to a halt. (p. 124)