Richard North Patterson

A friend whose opinions on books I greatly admire, recommended Richard North Patterson to me. At first I thought he meant James Patterson because I had never heard of Richard North Patterson, but my friend said he had tried one of his books and ended up reading five of them. I went online to see if my local library had any of his books, and I ran across this one. I really enjoyed “Trial,” both the quality of the writing and the engrossing plot. I’m not a huge reader of fiction. I often show more find novels way too long and not particularly intriguing. “Trial,” at nearly 600 pages flew by like a 200 page novel because of its clever yet fully believable plot. Much of the book highlights the political times we find ourselves in, and my guess is most, if not all of the one and two star reviews on Amazon are by conservatives who haven’t read one page of “Trial,” yet feel qualified to condemn it. My guess is the one word most of those reviews have in common is “woke.” show less

I received an ARC of this novel from the publisher, Henry Holt and Company.

Having read several of Richard North Patterson’s previous books, I was eagerly anticipating this one. I am happy to report that I was thoroughly caught up with In the Name of Honor from the moment I picked it up.

Patterson’s latest recounts the story of a young lieutenant, Brian McGarran, who is charged with murdering his commanding officer shortly after the two men return home from Iraq. McGarran, the son of an show more Army General of mythic reputation, suffers from the aftereffects of the trauma he endured in horrific battlefield conditions. He is defended at his court-martial by Paul Terry, an army lawyer wrestling with demons of his own stemming from the death of his father. Further complicating the trial is the fact that the victim was married to a woman (Kate Gallagher) with whom McGarran had a sisterly connection from the time McGarran’s mother committed suicide when McGarran was a boy.

There are so many things I like about this book, it’s hard to know where to start. Like Patterson’s earlier novels, In the Name of Honor tells a riveting story while exploring serious questions raised by a contemporary issue. Here, the reader is asked to consider how the concepts of honor and obedience interact with personal moral imperatives when executing orders of a questionable nature, and how the definition of honor in any situation may ultimately depend on an individual‘s moral code and circumstances. For the older McCarran, honor may not allow him to admit to the deleterious effects the war had on his soldier son; for the prosecutor it is a question of honor to defend the Army unquestioningly.

This story also causes the reader to reflect on how Iraq veterans are treated upon returning home, as well as the possible legal implications of the diagnosis of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. The combat scenes are so well written that they are hard to read -- all the more so because you are aware that such scenes are being played out overseas as you are reading. The acknowledgements section at the end of the book indicates that Patterson researched this book thoroughly, a fact borne out by the compelling authenticity of both the battle scenes and those set in the military courtroom.

Interwoven with this thought-provoking legal and military narrative is a multi-faceted family drama. The intrigues of the McCarran and Gallagher families, who are connected by war and tragedy, make for an engrossing saga. Patterson creates characters who are wholly human, foibles and all, who act in ways that show humanity at its best and its worst.

For the seamless combination of legal thriller, human drama and military fiction, with a denouement that kept me glued to the edge of my seat (to the extent that’s possible when reading), I highly recommend this book. show less

Note: this review is of the pre-publication edition in the Early Reviewer Program.

“ Eclipse” is a thinly-veiled, fictionalized account of atrocities and tragic environmental destruction in Nigeria carried out under the brutal regime of General Sani Abachaan from 1993-1998. Basically, North changed the names and added an irrelevant minor romance to the historical facts to create this tale of oppression and exploitation of the victimized inhabitants of an oil-rich African country.

North show more replaces oil-rich Nigeria with an African country named Luandia. An insane, brutal dictator named General Savior Karama, complete with tribal scars, replaces General Sani Abachaan. A U.S. oil company named PetroGlobal Luandia (PGL) acts as a co-conspirator with the corrupt Luandia government to protect its investment and the continued flow of oil and wealth out of the country; whereas, Shell Oil and other international corporations were the primary culprits in Nigeria.

The plot centers on a fictional activist leader named Bobby Okari, who is falsely accused of murdering three oil-workers and executed by hanging after a sham trial. Okari became a martyr for the tribal people suffering from the devastation of their land and waters caused by the petroleum industry. In reality, General Sani Abachaan hanged activist leader Ken Saro-Wiwa, who had led a nonviolent campaign for the rights of people living on the land damaged by the petroleum operations of international corporations, particularly Shell Oil.

North uses the vehicle of the trial of Okari, held in a tribunal redolent of the Star Chamber, to carry the story of the exploitation of the land and its people. In Luandia, Okari’s people live in shanty towns, where starving people dressed in rags scavenge in a massive garbage dump to sustain their desperate existence. This fiction accurately reflects the reality of the environmental destruction, poverty and ruin in Nigeria. Most telling is the depiction in a National Geographic article of February 2007 entitled: “Curse of the Black Gold: Hope and betrayal on the Niger Delta.” http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2007/02/nigerian-oil/oneill-text National Geographic describes the tragedy:

"Oil fouls everything in southern Nigeria. It spills from the pipelines, poisoning soil and water. It stains the hands of politicians and generals, who siphon off its profits. It taints the ambitions of the young, who will try anything to scoop up a share of the liquid riches—fire a gun, sabotage a pipeline, kidnap a foreigner."

In short, North uses “Eclipse” to lay out the Nigerian disaster in spades. Although plot, characters and action hang together and the writing is acceptable, this fantasy cannot touch the drama, impact and power of the actual historical events. Better to turn to Grisham, Baldacci, Connelly or Turow for a legal thriller and read the nonfictional account of the Nigerian events, which surpasses any fiction. show less

Massachusetts Congressman Chase Brevard flipped on the small portable television in his kitchen to catch Morning Joe and was stunned to see a news story that the son of Allie Hill, a Georgia voting rights advocate, was in jail, accused of killing a sheriff’s deputy. Immediately, Chase cancels his meetings and speaking engagements and flies to Georgia. Allie is the woman he fell in love with twenty years ago while an undergraduate at Harvard. The woman Chase never saw again after she left show more him in a hospital bed. Chase will soon find out that he is the father of Malcolm, the young man accused of murder, but is out of his element in rural Georgia and unable to provide meaningful assistance to Allie or Malcolm.

Richard North Patterson crafted a page-turning mystery that kept me engaged until the end. The reader is an eyewitness to the events that led to the deputy’s death. The when and where are without dispute, and the reader also knows the answers to the critical questions of why and how. The answers to those questions seem clear to the prosecuting attorney and the general public. They are the basis for the prosecutor’s decision to seek the death sentence. The evidence is so strong, and the political pressure on the prosecutor is so intense that the mystery confronting the reader is to imagine a logical way Chase and Malcolm’s lead attorney can realistically save Malcolm from a murder conviction.

The length is my only quibble with Trial. The 480-page story could have been considerably shortened with a more restrained approach. The lengthy section detailing Chase’s and Allie’s years at Harvard could have been abbreviated significantly without loss of clarity, as could the many afternoon and evening conversations between Allie and Chase in Georgia. While some of these sections became tedious, my engagement in the overall story never waned.

I recommend this book enthusiastically. It ranks among the best books I have read in 2024. show less