I'm not a fan of New Year's resolutions, but a desire to start January the way I want to continue the year is not quite a resolution. More of a nudge in the right direction: Fewer doughnuts, no bad wine, spice shelf rearranged and more mysteries read. Happily, I started the week with Brian Haig, a writer who knows his way around a mystery and around Washington, D.C., usually one and the same. His protagonist, Army Lt. Col. Sean Drummond, is a JAG lawyer--droll, macho, smart-ass, with a moral compass often disconcerting to his handlers. In this story, he's temporarily assigned to the CIA, secretly, of course. Since the CIA usually impersonates other federal agencies, Drummond needs to keep his act straight: "CIA people tend to be intelligent, clever, snide, and arrogant, and you have to suppress that. Feds tend to be intense Goody Two-shoes, wholesome, nosy, pushy and obnoxious, so I was good to go on three out of five. I think it's fairly obvious which three." Phyllis Carney, his agency boss, likes to hire misfits and oddballs for their willingness to apply unorthodox solutions to problems--"It's an interesting management theory. I think she's started looking into a new one since my arrival."
Drummond has been called on to investigate the case of Clifford Daniels, a Pentagon bureaucrat who's committed suicide prior to an appearance before the House Intelligence Oversight Subcommittee. Or was he murdered? Daniels is connected to Mahmoud Charabi, the Pentagon's main man in Baghdad, who hopes to run his country in the near future. "Washington attracts a lot of zealots yearning to borrow Uncle Sam's checkbook and a few legions to rearrange the décor back home. Some are the real deal . . . others are charlatans, schemers, phonies and scoundrels." One guess as to which group Charabi belongs. Aiding Drummond is Bian Tran, a major in the Military Police Corps with a recent combat tour in Iraq on her resume. Given her experience and his (an infantryman before he became a lawyer, who "saw action in Panama, the first Gulf War, Bosnia, and Mogadishu--messy war, good war, utterly confused war, total ****up."), who better to send to Iraq to capture and question a Saudi moneyman who may be the key to whatever is going on? "Whatever" is the operative word by now, since the suicide/murder has been shuffled aside by the convoluted, self-serving machinations of Washington, D.C., concurrent civil wars between Shiites and Shiites, Sunnis and Shiites, Sunnis and Sunnis, a bit of treason and Iraqi politics (hence, Iranian and Saudi politics).
Man in the Middle, like Haig's five previous books, mixes action, complex plot and humor with skepticism and mistrust of our government (and others). He loves the Army, but is not blinded to its imperfections or the flaws and weaknesses of the U.S.: "America has a grand record of knocking over other nations, even if our history of installing lasting new regimes is a bit checkered." He has a lot to say about politics on the Potomac, particularly with regard to the Pentagon: "George Orwell dreamed of rooms, and of men, like this." When Drummond describes a Pentagon defense intellectual as someone who uses big theories to describe small ideas, he adds, "I might have felt better about him, however, if I thought he could distinguish an M1A1 tank from an M1A2 as their treads crushed his shiny Beemer in the Pentagon parking lot." Drummond is the ethical center of Haig's novels, and while his statements may sound simplistic, they point to a morality that is often missing these days. In an argument with Bian Tran about not playing by the rules because the rules don't apply to terrorists, he says, "When you throw away the rule book . . . you get Abu Ghraibs. Play by those rules, they lose and you lose." Drummond is also the voice of reason: "Maybe they are ****ed off because we invaded their country . . . maybe it's why they're trying to kill us." The CIA, somewhat the good guy in this particular tale, is also seen as morally compromised. When Phyllis dismisses Tran's one-track mind, she cites the tension between idealism and pragmatism: "[Bian's] obsessed with justice and honor. We're doing what's best for the country."
From the twisted turnings of the White House and CIA, to the horrors of Baghdad and Fallujah, Sean Drummond attends a short but intense seminar on the Middle East, as do we. The murder investigation, treachery and the war in Iraq can be summed up with "Just when you think it's over, you get jerked through a new knothole." Brian Haig makes it both a dead-serious undertaking and a pleasure.--Marilyn Dahl
BINC.1118.T2.2024YEARENDCAMPAIGN.jpg)
The poster can be bought at the 
