Norfolk, December, 1943. A group of US fighter pilots is camped at an air base; their job is to escort bombers over Germany. Each mission could be their last. Goodbye Mickey Mouse is a vivid evocation of wartime England and a brilliant, multi-dimensional picture of what it is to be at war. At the center of the novel are two young men – Captain Jamie Farebrother, estranged son of a colonel, and cocky Lieutenant Mickey Morse (nicknamed “Mickey Mouse”), well on his way to becoming America’s Number One Flying Ace. Bonded only by their courage in deadly circumstances, their friendship forged in battle results in consequences for themselves and those they love.
Praise for Goodbye Mickey Mouse:
“It is a novel of memory, satisfying on every imaginable level, but truly astonishing in its recreation of a time and place through minute detail. Deighton has written well of the air before, nonfictionally, and he informs us in an afterword that it took six years of research to do this novel. It shows. The only way you could know more about flying a P-51 Mustang, after reading this book, is to have flown one.”—Washington Post
“He writes, as usual, with authority and a superb sense of period.”—Daily Telegraph
“The sheer charge of the writing swept me into another world all the while I was reading, and now that piece of the past is a piece in my mind.”—The Times