The main plot with "Hornet Squadron" in A Good Clean Fight focuses on efforts to entice the Luftwaffe fighters to come up and fight in the quiet period that preceded the Gazala Campaign. Barton, afraid that his hard-luck unit might be broken up, offers to conduct a systematic ground attack program in order to get the German fighters to commit to action (the Germans preferred to hold their fighters back in order to prepare for the main battle coming). In effect, Barton commits his unit to an attritional campaign that can have but one end for the squadron - whittling down pilots and aircraft in the hope that something will "break loose" before the unit is combat ineffective. Barton has changed somewhat since A Piece of Cake and is no longer very sympathetic; many readers might feel that he is sacrificing his unit for his own sake, but that is unfair. "Fanny's" efforts to "outfox" the enemy as he says, and "Skull's" pointed explanations of why this is unlikely are quite interesting. In the midst of this growing tension in the unit, Robinson delivers several excellent and exciting descriptions of air-ground attacks on assorted targets.
Lampard begins the novel with an exciting raid on a German airfield and even briefly captures the intelligence officer, Schramm. Robinson's depiction of these raids gives great insight not only into SAS tactics of the period, but the type of men who excelled in this type of work. Lampard in many respects is the SAS leader par excellence - aggressive, physically impressive, cunning and ultra-competent. Unfortunately, Lampard has some flaws which may not be uncommon in the special operations community: he is a "risk junkie" who doesn't know when to quit and he lies to superiors and subordinates in order to cover up his mistakes. Like Barton's attrition tactics, Lampard's "risk tactics" seem preordained to eventual catastrophe, of course, with much bravery along the way.
Schramm starts out as a very interesting, witty character but gradually withers into a sour, introverted, pathetic sort. While Schramm and his peers do provide some tension in the novel with their "cat and mouse" game with Lampard, one feels that the SAS are never seriously threatened by Luftwaffe intelligence. Indeed, the one German effort to send a large patrol out into the desert to ambush the in-coming SAS patrols ends up in total and ridiculous disaster. The worst parts of the novel involve Schraam's involvement with an Italian female doctor - this goes nowhere and means nothing. On the Allied side, the antics of two reporters is also quite distracting and useless. Were it not for these distracting minor characters - who somehow elbow out the main characters in midstream - A Good Clean Fight would have been nearly perfect.
As usual, Robinson's humor is very dry and very dark, and is certainly the most compelling aspect of his novels. Robinson is able to show both the bravery and the stupidity in war, as well as just the sheer misery of trying to fight in blast-furnace heat, covered with flies. In a historical sense, Robinson also delivers insight into neglected facets of the desert war, such as the "Takoradi" trail the Allies used to ferry planes across Africa and the German air raid on Chad to interdict the trail.
