The Price of Victory

If you enjoy the TV program JAG, about military justice, then you'll find "Price of Victory" an absorbing read. Billy Frazier is a Silver Star beret finishing out his military career in an admin post in Germany. He's a little shady, supplementing his income by selling answers to the German driving test to other soldiers for $20, but otherwise he's just another sergeant on the U.S. base.His world is shattered when a nutty Lieutenant with a Napoleonic complex - believing that he alone can protect US forces from their naivety about the still evil Soviets - 'phones in a real bomb threat to the Army Base so that he can steal funds to finance his plans.The lieutenant is caught and convicted to 99 years in Leavenworth. Encouraged by an ambitious prosecutor looking for other successes, he and an accomplice finger Frazier for the Army's biggest drug smuggler in Europe in return for reduced sentences.The plot is solidly constructed, and the story unfolds with repeated ebbs and flows between the prosecution and the defence.I enjoyed this book thoroughly and would classify it as excellent airplane, vacation, or other diversionary reading. However, this book does not, in my mind, reach "compelling/must-read" status - it didn't "grab me by the gut" as other courtroom dramas have done - hence I rate it 4 stars rather than 5.

A very impressive first novel about the prosecution by the military of a suspected drug dealer whose operations are of a gigantic proportion. A real page-turner with well-drawn characters.