There I was, easing my way through an early Bob Lee Swagger story getting a lot of the backstory on how Bob Lee came to known as The Nailer during his Vietnam years when the library notified me that one of my requests was in. Dang it. I knew it would be a 1 week loan. So, Bob Lee had to be put aside.The wars in the Gulf continue to take American lives. But this isn't about the wars, this is about Wall Street, Washington, DC, and the politics of hostile takeovers and government contracts, about manipulation, and intimidation, and ultimately about overwhelming greed losing out to people who believe in their role as watchdogs of the public trust....and make a few bucks at the same time.
Jack Wiley is a Wall Street shark who has worked his way through a series of firms making millions for his bosses and himself. His research turns up a chemical company one step short of bankruptcy, but on the cusp of a major discovery that could turn the tide in the Gulf. But this company doesn't do high risk takeovers, so Jack goes shopping for a firm that might test the limits of ethics to get this product and start producing it fast so they could make billions.
Enter the Capitol Group; a major player in the defense contracts game that is not beyond stretching their legal bounds and throwing some serious money around to get what they want. Jack sells them on this company and it's wonder polymer, which when painted on humvees and everything else make them impervious to IEDs, rocket propelled grenades, and other preferred weaponry of the bad guys. CG bullies the takeover, ambushes a rival company by buying influence on the House Armed Services Committee, pushes the polymer through the Pentagon's procurement maze, gains a $20B contract and starts painting the army's vehicles.
Problem is they didn't do their due diligence on testing the polymer and it seems to have a bit of a defect. Oh, it works, but it doesn't age very well. Enter Mia Jensen, #2 in her class at Harvard Law, on the fast track for partnership at one of those mega-firms, who up and quits her six figure salary job and joins up with the Defense Criminal Investigative Service to do the dirty work of trying to maintain integrity in the dirty world of defense contracting (she has a good reason, you just have to wait until the last few pages to find it). She smells something and starts flexing her authority with the Capitol Group. Naturally, they think they can use their influence on Capitol Hill and the Pentagon to squeeze her out and keep the polymer printing money for them.
We then witness the legal haranguing that probably goes on every day in DC with threats, intimidation, more threats, mysterious tapes, counter threats, bribes, swindles, lawsuits, 60 Minutes, perp walks, and the 10% reward (that's 10% of the original contract) for whistleblowers, like Jack Wiley. Hey, it's OK to get rich bringing down jerks like CG, right?
Now this likely doesn't sound like a fast paced thriller and if you just read the jacket flap in the bookstore (and didn't know Haig's ability to pace a thriller), you might set it back down, but that would be your loss. This kick-ass thriller speeds us right through a world that for most all of us is entirely baffling. And isn't that one definition of a thriller? Jack plays greedy creeps against each other and manipulates the system to screw CG right into bankruptcy. And all to avenge a loss. Lots of folks agree as this book is on the NYTime best seller list for a second week.
Haig wrote a series of military justice thrillers featuring attorney Sean Drummond - a character I really liked. But this is Haig's 2nd consecutive novel that doesn't feature Drummond. While I would love to read another Drummond book, that won't keep me from keeping Haig on my power rotation. One of my favs. Absolutely. Go ahead, escape to world we are all better off not being a part of.
Now, back to Bob Lee.
East Coast Don
EC Don – great review, excellent read. 2 stories come to mind. The first has to do with the opening story about Tom, the war hero who wasn’t. After being under fire all day, Tom flipped out and/or acted cowardly, and as the result, he was killed. But, his surviving buddies decided they would hide the truth from Tom’s wife and kids, and they claimed he was a hero. The group kept having reunions and retelling their stories about Tom since his wife was always there. After a number of years, the author wrote that the survivors seemed to believe their own stories. That reminded me of my time in the 70s when I was treating Vietnam War vets with PTSD. I met a guy who was a WWII vet whose job was to censor letters that were going home, from the Burma theater, so that no sensitive data would be released, in case the airplane with the letters went down on the way back to the U.S. Despite the fact that the guys in Burma had the best job in the war, the best schedule, the best PX in the world, the best weather, and an absence of any enemy activity, they guy told me the soldiers would write home that they were constantly under fire, constantly running short of comfort supplies, working horrendous hours, etc. When I met the censor, he had just come from a war reunion, and he said that the guys all seemed to believe the very lies they had written. His point to me was not to believe all the war stories that I was hearing, and he absolutely right. The second story has to do with the hilarious juxtaposition of Haig’s introduction of two characters. There was the beautiful, elegant, stylish Mia Jenson, Investigator, Defense Criminal Investigative Service. Then, there was the obese pig of a man, Earl Belzer, a congressman who was in charge of the committee for defense spending. Comically, while Mia dazzled and moved with grace, Earl fell into his chair and pulled his pants out of his crotch.
ReplyDeleteEC Don – great review, excellent read. 2 stories come to mind. The first has to do with the opening story about Tom, the war hero who wasn’t. After being under fire all day, Tom flipped out and/or acted cowardly, and as the result, he was killed. But, his surviving buddies decided they would hide the truth from Tom’s wife and kids, and they claimed he was a hero. The group kept having reunions and retelling their stories about Tom since his wife was always there. After a number of years, the author wrote that the survivors seemed to believe their own stories. That reminded me of my time in the 70s when I was treating Vietnam War vets with PTSD. I met a guy who was a WWII vet whose job was to censor letters that were going home, from the Burma theater, so that no sensitive data would be released, in case the airplane with the letters went down on the way back to the U.S. Despite the fact that the guys in Burma had the best job in the war, the best schedule, the best PX in the world, the best weather, and an absence of any enemy activity, they guy told me the soldiers would write home that they were constantly under fire, constantly running short of comfort supplies, working horrendous hours, etc. When I met the censor, he had just come from a war reunion, and he said that the guys all seemed to believe the very lies they had written. His point to me was not to believe all the war stories that I was hearing, and he absolutely right.
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