Man in the Middle

As with most things involving Iraq, I suspect that the views one has in our involvement there, color how one views many things, including a fictionalized thriller/mystery which uses the Iraq war and it's aftermath as it's template. I found this latest Sean Drummond novel to be fascinating reading from the who-done-it point of view as well as the historical and political understanding that the author shows about the wheels within wheels that are involved in that conflict. It is difficult to explain the plot of the novel without unnecessarily giving away the story. Others have done so with varying degrees of success and I have simply decided to say that I found this to be a very well written, interesting, informative and hard to put down novel. I hope you find it to be that as well, if you chose to buy it.

Sean Drummond is back. And he is mouthier, funnier, and more arrogant than ever before. As any other Brian Haig's novel, Drummond is the main protagonist, battling global conspiracies, bureaurcrats, and his own tendency to always get in the middle of everything, i.e. trouble. Man in the Middle is not only entertaining, but also shows innate understanding of the American army workings; knowledge of the Middle Eastern region and cultures, as well as great narrative. I am amazed at how real Brian Haig makes Drummond, with all his flaws, insight, and moral principle. If you like a good story teller and a good narrative, Man in the Middle will not disappoint you!!!

Brian Haig seems to be able to take the suspense/thriller genre and make it feel fresh again. AFter reading books of this type for a while, one can become jaded and start to get the "been there - seen that" attitude but Haig is able to keep me interested and not always able to predict how things will unfold. Although not the best in the Drummond series, this is still a good read and well worth the time.

It is 2004. The United States military is bogged down in a supposedly liberated Iraq trying to keep the nation from collapsing into all-out civil war. M eanwhile, back in Washington, Clifford Daniels - one of the architects of that war of liberation - has died under rather mysterious circumstances and Sean Drummond, Army JAG attorney on loan to the CIA's Office of Special Projects, is tasked with seeing exactly where the evidence surrounding Daniels' death may lead...And, as Drummond's luck would have it, it leads him to Baghdad's Green Zone and a tangled web of deceit and deadly lies. It is not hyerpbole to state that there is not likely to be a work of fiction this year that will be as timely or, in many ways, as heartbreaking as Brian Haig's Man in the Middle. There is a saying that sometimes the only way to speak truth is through fiction and Brian Haig, within the framework of a crackling-good murder mystery, shines a bright and sometimes harsh light on some of the ugly truthes of war in general and this war in particular. Without a single polemical word - or even once breaking stride from his breakneck plot - Haig shows us how the noble motives that led the United States into Iraq quickly unraveled due to lack of clear objectives and proper planning in support of same and how the price of such folly is paid with the blood of too many young men and women. With each successive novel, Brian Haig grows more and more impressive as a storyteller and now, with Man in the Middle, he tells not only a whale of a good story, but an important one as well.

Sean Drummond is back, with a new rank and a new assignment, however his cynical attitude remains the same. At the scene of what readily appears to be the suicide of a shadowy member of Washington's intelligence industry, Drummond meets a gorgeous U.S. Military Police Investigator Bian Tran. Closer examination of the scene, the body and the effects left at the scene, clue the two investigators that more is behind the death than a simple suicide of a man about to be exposed as one of the catalysts that sent the U.S. to war in Iraq. After thorough examination of the crime scene and in-depth questioning of the victim's wife, Tran and Drummond surmise the victim was murdered, but forces above their pay grade in the Pentagon and State Department are blocking all attempts to call it anything but a suicide. Frustrated by this, Drummond finds himself in front of his own superiors, who lay out the case's intricacies in order to rein in their investigation. It all seems to begin and end with the next Prime Minister of Iraq, an ex-patriot before the war, now the most powerful man in the country, who may have switched sides and is now in bed with Iran. Here begins an odyssey that takes Tran and Drummond to Iraq and into the deep, dark depths of U.S. operations inside the beleaguered country. As they peel away the layers of deception put up to stop them, the two investigators and the in-country soldiers and spooks tasked to assist them, encounter one deviation after another. Drummond perceives he's being set up, for what he cannot tell, but it's coming and he's powerless to stop it. Nefarious deals and random killings are a part of life in Iraq--and he is in the thick of it. Brain Haig is able to recreate the dust, dirt and grit of Iraq as only a person that has been there can do. The deception and callous expenditure of life both inside and outside of the world's intelligence agencies is recreated into a story that hooks you from the start and keeps you reading to the end. Armchair Interviews says: Well-set-up thrills and chills.