Question to all --- what symbol do I use to maintain paragraphs when I post a picture?
I should go to the HTML sandbox I guess....
A thought on action; it's vital. I liked the description of the Mossad agent's fight with the police. Well done and graphic and spare.
Carton I also liked your description of Jackson's early time at the Academy. Loved the details of his wiping off chak from the board until his uniform was gray (a symbol of things to come) and his sitting by a coal fire.
There is big action and little action.
Here's Big Action from 'Desolation Island' by Patrick O'Brian:
"As Moore's hand came down, Jack automatically stepped aside; but he was still stupid, he moved slow, and the recoiling gun flung him to the deck again. On hands and knees he felt for the train-takle in the smoke, found it as the darkness cleared, and tallied on. But for the moment he could not understand the cheering theat filed the cabin, deafening his ears; then through the shattered deadlights he saw the Dutchman's foremast lurch, lurch again, the stays part, the mast and sail carry away right over the bows.
The 'Leopard' reached the crest (of the wave). Green water blinded him. It cleared and through the bloody haze running from his clothes he saw the vast breaking wave with the 'Waakzaamheid' broadside on its curl, on her beam-ends, broached to. An enormous momentary turmoil of black hull and white water, flying spars, rigging that streamed wild for a second, and then nothing at all but the great hill of green-grey with foam racing upon it.
"My God, oh my God," he said. "Six hundred men."
Of course this is the very end of the long description of the running fight between the Leopard and the 'Waakzaaheid'.
Not only action, but interior chracterization ---Jack's deep regret for loss of life even though the enemy was doing his best to kill Jack and all his crew.
Here's small action, from McCarthy's 'The Crossing' (I don't know how to do italics, either) :^(
this is when the doctor comes to try to extract the bullet out of Boyd.
(The doctor) selected from their fitted compartments in his case his tools of nickel steel. Sharpnosed scissors and hemostats some dozen in number. Boyd watched. Billy watched. He sroppeds the instruments into the pan ...(the woman) blassed herself and bent and reached and took hold of the rag that bound the poultice and lifted it and slid her thumb beneath the poultice and pulled it away. It was of matted weeds and dark with blood and it came away unwillingly. Like something that had been feeding there. She stepped back and folded it from sight in the dirty sheeting. Boyd lay in the flickering light of the votive candle with a small round hole a few inches above and to the left of his nipple.
And it geets even more graphic.
With both examples, an enormous amount is at stake -- life itself.
I don't think you'd want this kind of description if nothingwere at stake. When it is, it's gripping.
Yikes, excuse my mispellings. I promise on a copy of Dickens that I will use spellcheck in the future.
Hope that helps. I will read over your selections.