The subject is an interesting one. I opened this book expecting an enjoyable read about a highly specialized form of 20th-century archeology.

But Melody Foreman's The Wreck Hunter: Battle of Britain & the Blitz is a disappointment.

The book tells the true story of Terry Parsons, who was a young boy during the Nazi attacks over London and, some two decades later, was among the first people to begin unearthing British and German airplanes that had crashed on English soil and were lost or forgotten. (It's not as crazy as it sounds; many of the planes slammed into the earth so hard they were embedded feet or yards beneath the surface. Others came down in remote areas and were buried over time.)

So, while celebrating the efforts of Parsons and a few other dedicated "aviation archeologists," The Wreck Hunter also tells the stories of some of the pilots who lost their lives during the Blitz ... or who survived and were reunited with their lost aircraft decades after the fact.

It's a solid idea, and the book is well illustrated with photos from the war and subsequent digs. But the execution is off.

A major issue with the book is its voice. The book is written in first-person, as if the author were its subject, Terry Parsons. But Foreman, described in her bio as a "qualified journalist," is credited as the writer; she presumably interviewed Parsons or took his notes and turned them into a book.

Frankly, I'm not sure why they're not listed as co-authors, or "by Terry Parsons, as told to Melody Foreman" would serve as well, but as it is, it's a little confusing to read about Melody's years as a young boy during the war. A third-person perspective would have served this book much better.

Foreman spends a lot of time patting Parsons on the back, praising his dedication, his generosity, his good nature, his boyhood idolization of the RAF pilots ... and it may well be deserved, but written from his point of view, it sounds entirely too self-laudatory.

There are also some repetitive passages, one of the most glaring of which can be found on page 40, when Foreman (or Parsons?) explains that Hermann Goerring sometimes sent Gestapo officers along on bombing runs by the Luftwaffe to ensure the pilots were following their orders, and then the same explanation is repeated, in slightly different words, on page 44, as if it were new information. It's not the only time something like this occurs in the book, but it's one of the most obvious.

Ultimately, the book doesn't work for me because ... it's dull. Foreman fails to make the book's subject as thrilling as it should be, given the rich history behind Parsons' findings. Instead, it plods along at a snail's pace, telling similar stories in similar patterns, over and over again. I wanted to love this book -- because I honor the memory of those brave airmen, and I respect the work Parsons has done to ensure they are remembered -- but I was bored.