Private Sector

I just love wise-cracking protagonists; they have a skill I've never been able to develop. Sean Drummond is the JAG attorney creation of Brian Haig, son of Alexander (you know, of "Don't worry, Alex is here. I'm in charge, so nothing to worry about" fame), but I won't hold that against him.
Major Drummond has been asked to spend a year working for a private law firm - Culper, Hutch, and Westin - that represent some of the District of Columbia's most respectable institutions, as an experiment in army/private sector cooperation. The fact that he is unpopular with his army superiors for his sharp tongue and insubordination might also have had something to do with it. Drummond begins irritating his stuffed shirt bosses from the moment he show more arrives. He figures if he makes himself sufficiently unpopular, he can get himself kicked out of the program, where he follows in the footsteps at the law firm of Lisa Morrow, another JAG officer and Sean's erstwhile old flame.
Lisa had been killed in the Pentagon parking lot just before a dinner date that Sean hopes might rekindle some of the former embers. Her death is followed by three others, all the ostensible work of a serial killer whose modus operandi appears very similar to that of the LA Killer of several years before, i.e., the victims' necks had all been snapped. There was no apparent connection between the victims.
Sean, in the meantime has become embroiled in an audit of Morris Telecommunications, a company that has retained his law firm. Sean discovers some unusual financial arrangements, but he has no reason to suspect anything particularly nefarious until his brother, a financial wizard with spreadsheets, points out that several "swaps" on Morris's books put Sean's firm in some financial jeopardy. (Swaps are what sank Enron. Basically, two entities get together to show revenue on their books for the largely insubstantial use of each other's services. It's a way of propping up income statements to keep stock prices up, all legal according to generally accepted accounting principles, but another reason to shoot the accountants before going after the lawyers. :)) ) Drummond also begins to realize that the firm's attorneys might be capitalizing on his inexperience with corporate law to set him up as a fall guy. They to reckon without his long experience as a criminal attorney for the army.
In the meantime, Janet Morrow, Lisa's sister and assistant district attorney in Boston, has decided to follow the investigation into her sister's death from close up. She and Sean discover that Lisa's emails had been hidden and quarantined in the firm's network behind a secure firewall. Sean is accused of malfeasance by the firm, but by some not-so-subtle pressure on the privates of his boss (in a very funny scene), Sean extorts the help of the firm's computer expert to examine Lisa's emails. It's there that he discovers a link between the victims. Lisa had known all of them.
Soon Drummond is snared in a mesh of conflicting loyalties, as he discovers that some governmental agencies are involved in some very secret business. A fun read. Drummond is a great character who ranks with Nelson DeMille's wiseacre CID investigator. show less

This book is the fourth entry in the series featuring Major Sean Drummond. Drummond is a JAG criminal attorney (and former infantryman) - both roles inform his adventures in the book. These books are not great literature, but they are really, really good. Drummond is a wise-ass, tough guy, cynical, street smart, devious and sometimes very funny. He may not take the direct route to his results, but his sense of justice is linear. Oh, and the ladies love him because he tall, strong and good-looking. The female supporting cast members are young, stunning and sexually available (albeit, sometimes manipulated into being so by the male bad guys) or are older, smart and corrupt or powerful or both, grandmotherly or unattractive. But these are show more not books about social issues. You read these books for plot and for especially for Drummond.

Private Sector places Drummond in the "exchange student" role at a tony D.C. law firm pursuant to a cooperative program between the Army's legal forces and corporate law firms. The setting gives Drummond the opportunity to take some good shots at what he sees as the arrogant, narcissistic, back-biting, greedy private sector lawyers, who are in it for ducats and not for good. Along the way he lobs a few at the Army mind-set, governmental bureaucracy, the FBI, the CIA and even the Boy Scouts. The plot starts with murder, moves to a series of murders (gasp - a serial killer?) and expands into corporate wrong-doing and those who cover it up.

P.S. Haig does a really good job of keeping the technical, but necessary, parts of the book, such as corporate accounting (really), readable, unlike some authors who bog the reader down in techno-speak, or spy parlance, or ballistics, or astrophysics. Other authors should really take a lesson. show less

Not as good as either Mortal Allies or The Kingmaker, but still a very entertaining book. This time, the novel throws in a serial killer element to go with thriller and mystery elements. And I enjoyed the fact that Haig remembers characters that he has introduced previously and returns to them where appropriate. Sean Drummond is, now that I know what to expect, becoming one of my favorite characters. (As an example of the sort of dialog that a reader can expect, in one sequence Maj. Drummond's commanding general orders Drummond to report for a new assignment that Drummond wants no part of. Drummond asks if the new assignment is negotiable and the general replies that it is not. To this Drummond asks: "Is your non-negotiability show more negotiable?") Smart and funny without taking away from the action and excitement. Said another way: Funny without being stupid. show less

At the beginning I liked the view of the Army scene from the eyes of this rather crude JAG officer. We see how he views women and the powers that be, much of that view he does not actually verbalize. There are murders in the story and we point of view shifts to the murderer. The murders are gruesome and I dropped reading this book at about 40% not wishing to read descriptions of more of them. It was just too much darkness for me. I had grown pretty tired of our hero's thoughts on the attributes of various women as well.

JAG attorney Major Sean Drummond's bad attitude is probably responsible for his assignment on loan for a year to a large corporate law firm. Just before he can get information hand off from the JAG attorney who did the stint before him, she was murdered. Other murders pile up and it's looking like they aren't random and they are connected to the firm. This is another good read from Haig.

I like this main character (Sean Drummond) a lot. He is wry, witty and intuitive and makes me think of some of the best of John Sanford's characters in the Lucas Davenport series.

Good plot, full of believable characters. I will likely read the whole series about Drummond. Highly recommended.

Second read of Haig's dip into corporate crime and CIS program to investigate global money laundering plot. More murders than typical for this series and more wise-ass Drummond behavior. Ending is a bit abrupt with several unresolved secondary and tertiary plotlines.