A Grave Breach

Studded with a cast of memorable characters, "A Grave Breach" is an international legal thriller by James Macomber, a true master of this popular action/adventure/suspense genre. John Cann is asked to defend someone charged with war crimes by his trusted friend, mentor and colleague Arthur Matsen. Then there is Janie Reston, a young American college girl savagely brutalized left for dead because of her connection to Cann. The girl is under threat by Nathan Fredrich, an unscrupulous psychiatrist intent on exploiting her horrendous ordeal to capitalize on his questionable theories concerning repressed memories. With a complex and engaging plot involving diverse post-war legal, moral, and ethical dilemmas in Europe, compounded by strong emotional ties and vulnerabilities among the principle characters, "A Grave Breach" is a compelling, superbly crafted, totally engaging read from beginning to end that can be wholeheartedly recommended for personal reading lists and community library fiction collections.

Absorbing and horrifying, James Macomber's novel A GRAVE BREACH sets a story of revenge against the backdrop of the fierce ethnic conflicts in the Balkans. A Washington law firm is tasked with defending a soldier charged with war crimes, and even within the defense team, secret motivations exist, spanning decades. A videotape depicting the crime is the bait in the mousetrap, set by a brutal villain with a grudge against one of the lawyers. Soon, the lawyers, all of whom have ties to the intelligence community, are forced to use every weapon in their considerable arsenal to foil the plot and stay alive. This was a solid read for fans of real-world thrillers.

James Macomber writes like a human satellite: zooming in on multiple storylines, spread across continents and decades, with alarming clarity and precision. The novel follows a trio of Washington lawyers who become embroiled in defending a soldier accused of ethnic cleansing in the Balkans. Tied to the trio is a young girl rendered disabled by her savage beating at the hands of Islamic terrorists. Macomber weaves the fates of these characters together with a Romanian prostitute, a hardened anti-terrorist captain and a purely evil bandit king who has set the entire series of events into motion as a trap. A thrilling conclusion still leaves questions unanswered, along with a strong desire to see these characters again.

A Grave Breach examines the Balkan Wars from a number of perspectives: the soldiers on both sides of the conflict, hardened by decades of horrific violence, the victims of the criminal culture that has sprung up in the absence of law, and the outsiders attempting to comprehend the depths of cruelty displayed. The novel is a searing indictment of the corruption that continues to poison the region, both from the strong-arm tactics of the local mafia and from the supposed aid agencies who have been sent to help, but who instead perpetrate injustice with impunity. This well-researched novel follows a lawyer with an intelligence background and a price on his head from a number of terrorist organizations, as he penetrates a plot by a sadistic thug with a mind twisted by vengeance. Scary, bleeding-edge stuff; this guy knows what he's talking about.

A Grave Breach combines sweeping, layered story-telling with a Clancy-like eye for detail that never ceases to astound. James Macomber is equally comfortable with the minutiae of the international legal system as he is with the blow-by-blow recounting of close expert combat, and the novel has plenty of both. Set against the continuing ethnic conflict in the Balkans, the plot pits the members of a Washington law firm with "special" skills against a host of evildoers, all with their own agendas. Macomber's terrorists are far more than just fanatics: they are deeply involved in everything from murder-for-hire to human trafficking, as long as it turns a profit. Smart, heavy-hitting; this thriller had me hooked the entire read.