Grief can be the spawn of betrayal as well as deaths debris, and when it morphs into revenge, grief can fuel infernos Satan would envy. High Order draws a picture of the deadly results that betrayal can yield. It drives one man to serial murder; sends a victims husband on his own deadly campaign for revenge; and leads a third person to form a devastating plan to prevent his ex-wife from remarrying. When Baltimores citizens are in a jam, they call the police. When the police need help, they call the Emergency Services Unit, AKA the bomb squad. Lead bomb technician Hunter Morgan learned many valuable lessons during his three tours in Vietnam, but none more powerful than this: People are never more dangerous than when they feel they have nothing left to lose. Morgan, homicide detective Andrew Hermann, and journalist Dusty Rhodes form an unlikely trio in a desperate race to deal with the explosive results of the three intertwined cases.
High Order
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I grew up in East Texas, about halfway between Houston and Dallas. By the time I was 18, I found myself on the wrong side of the law in Chicago. A judge told me I could go to the Illinois State license plate factory. Or I could provide him with proof of my enlistment in any branch of America's Armed Forces. I left the courthouse, turned right found an Army Recruiting Station a few blocks away. In the 60s if you could fog up a mirror the Army would take you.
Not long afterward, in early 1964, I found myself in the Republic of South Vietnam (RVN) as a member of the Military Assistance Command - Vietnam (MACV) with approximately 18,000 other Americans. I spent the year mostly north of Saigon in Pleiku, Ban Me Thout and finally as part of the team supporting the Vietnamese Military Academy in Dalat.
After returning to "The World" I was assigned to Ft. Bragg, N.C. There I learned that the Army believed it was much easier to send successful "advisors" back to Vietnam than it was to make new ones with "success" being defined as "survival." I probably mislead the Army into thinking that was OK since I'd reenlisted for six more years and I'd skipped a "Vietnam Orientation," foolishly thinking that I'd learned more in a year than I could in an hour.
My second tour in the RVN went in the opposite direction. The Mekong Delta was my home that year, mostly in Bac Lieu Province assigned to the 21st ARVN (Army Republic of Vietnam). By 1966 the Vietnam build-up was in full swing with Marine and Army units operating in unit strength, mostly north of Saigon.
Once again I returned to Ft. Bragg and spent a year there before being sent to Italy in 1968. Italy was a whole lot more livable than MAC-V. Again, there was a "Vietnam Orientation" and since I hadn't cracked the code yet, I skipped it. In '69 . . . you guessed it, I received orders to return to MAC-V. Note to self . . .
During '69 and '70 I returned to the Mekong Delta, and Bac Lieu Province. This time I was assigned to Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development Support (CORDS) Team 20.
By then, the war was going through the "Vietnamization" stage, a euphemism for "pulling-out," which turned over more and more of the support and combat operations to indigenous personnel. However, MACV advisors continued to do what they had since becoming America's first ante in Vietnam: train the troops then accompany them on combat operations. Organized directly under general William C. Westmoreland, CORDS consisted of a civil-military structure designed to pacify their areas of operation by training the local populations into Regional and Popular Forces (RF/PF) military organizations and improving the government's responsiveness. The latter consisted of various CIA Rural Development organizations working to dig wells, build schools and provide remote medical assistance.
In 1970 I returned to Ft. Gordon, Ga. where I attended every Vietnam Orientation scheduled on the post. But alas, in early 1972 I received orders for . . . Yup! However, I had less than 90 days until my reenlistment was up and once I pointed out to a crusty old warrant officer at personnel that I had no intention to "re-up" the orders were cancelled.
In 1974 I finally learned that you can make more with your mind than you can with your back. I went to school, got a degree and was hired by IBM. It's a long way from the bib overalls of Carlisle, Texas to the three piece suits of IBM and even farther from the Mekong Delta to "The World." Life was great . . . and I was miserable.
The VA's Vietnam Vet Outreach program was my salvation. Not for what it did for me, but rather for what it told me to do for myself . . . write.
And I did, about all the things I couldn't talk about. That was the genesis of No Survivors, my Vietnam novel. It's based on real people and events during my three tours in Vietnam and is dedicated to the 58,260 names on The Wall, their families and all veterans.
Now, High Order is available -- my second novel based on actual Baltimore Bomb Squad cases.
I wish you well! Mike Sutton
Not long afterward, in early 1964, I found myself in the Republic of South Vietnam (RVN) as a member of the Military Assistance Command - Vietnam (MACV) with approximately 18,000 other Americans. I spent the year mostly north of Saigon in Pleiku, Ban Me Thout and finally as part of the team supporting the Vietnamese Military Academy in Dalat.
After returning to "The World" I was assigned to Ft. Bragg, N.C. There I learned that the Army believed it was much easier to send successful "advisors" back to Vietnam than it was to make new ones with "success" being defined as "survival." I probably mislead the Army into thinking that was OK since I'd reenlisted for six more years and I'd skipped a "Vietnam Orientation," foolishly thinking that I'd learned more in a year than I could in an hour.
My second tour in the RVN went in the opposite direction. The Mekong Delta was my home that year, mostly in Bac Lieu Province assigned to the 21st ARVN (Army Republic of Vietnam). By 1966 the Vietnam build-up was in full swing with Marine and Army units operating in unit strength, mostly north of Saigon.
Once again I returned to Ft. Bragg and spent a year there before being sent to Italy in 1968. Italy was a whole lot more livable than MAC-V. Again, there was a "Vietnam Orientation" and since I hadn't cracked the code yet, I skipped it. In '69 . . . you guessed it, I received orders to return to MAC-V. Note to self . . .
During '69 and '70 I returned to the Mekong Delta, and Bac Lieu Province. This time I was assigned to Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development Support (CORDS) Team 20.
By then, the war was going through the "Vietnamization" stage, a euphemism for "pulling-out," which turned over more and more of the support and combat operations to indigenous personnel. However, MACV advisors continued to do what they had since becoming America's first ante in Vietnam: train the troops then accompany them on combat operations. Organized directly under general William C. Westmoreland, CORDS consisted of a civil-military structure designed to pacify their areas of operation by training the local populations into Regional and Popular Forces (RF/PF) military organizations and improving the government's responsiveness. The latter consisted of various CIA Rural Development organizations working to dig wells, build schools and provide remote medical assistance.
In 1970 I returned to Ft. Gordon, Ga. where I attended every Vietnam Orientation scheduled on the post. But alas, in early 1972 I received orders for . . . Yup! However, I had less than 90 days until my reenlistment was up and once I pointed out to a crusty old warrant officer at personnel that I had no intention to "re-up" the orders were cancelled.
In 1974 I finally learned that you can make more with your mind than you can with your back. I went to school, got a degree and was hired by IBM. It's a long way from the bib overalls of Carlisle, Texas to the three piece suits of IBM and even farther from the Mekong Delta to "The World." Life was great . . . and I was miserable.
The VA's Vietnam Vet Outreach program was my salvation. Not for what it did for me, but rather for what it told me to do for myself . . . write.
And I did, about all the things I couldn't talk about. That was the genesis of No Survivors, my Vietnam novel. It's based on real people and events during my three tours in Vietnam and is dedicated to the 58,260 names on The Wall, their families and all veterans.
Now, High Order is available -- my second novel based on actual Baltimore Bomb Squad cases.
I wish you well! Mike Sutton
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Great seeing Hunter Morgan again!,
By
This review is from: High Order (Paperback)
Loved it! Even better than his first one! Had me riveted... read the whole thing in one sitting. Loved the ending. You won't be disappointed.
5.0 out of 5 stars
"High Order", the best read I've had in a long time!,
By
This review is from: High Order (Paperback)
I was riveted to this book. I was on the edge of my chair/bed (depending where I was reading) and chewing my nails...a habit I broke years ago. I had NO idea where it was going or how it would end. This word is used far too often, but in this case it truly fits, 'High Order' was AWESOME! Thanks so much, for the research you put into this project, and the creative imagination you have going on in your head to provide the reader with such an intensely forceful chronicle, about members of our society that can one day, seem profoundly "normal", and due to phenomenon that occurs either early in life, or completely out of the blue in the present, become a mad, dangerously crazed, lunatic the next.
5.0 out of 5 stars
A serial killer meets his equal when he murders the wife of a bomb expert who must seek vengeance,
By Regis Schilken "Rege" (Bethel Park, Pennsylvania) - See all my reviews
This review is from: High Order (Paperback)
High Order written by Mike Sutton is a bone chilling multi-murder mystery that will keep readers racing through its pages from the explosion in the first few until the very ending in the epilogue.In the story, Jim Grabowski is Baltimore's Lead Bomb Technician who risks his life each time a suspicious package or gadget is suspect as a bomb threat. Many times the threats are bogus. But on those occasions where the lives of others are at risk, Jim and the men he works with endanger their own lives trying to determine if a suspect device is armed, and if it is, how to defuse or explode it safely. In High Order, the wife of a 70-year-old man is hideously murdered. Although two people do not witness the actual butchery, quite by happenstance, the husband and wife secretly see the killer toss the corpse into a dumpster. Both know the auto's make and license number. Hassled police hope they finally have an open and shut case against a serial murderer who has raped and slaughtered several other women. He follows a routine which has now become familiar to detectives. The two witnesses independently identify the killer from a line-up. But the enormously wealthy father of his alleged killer son is able to hire a high-priced lawyer who buys-out prosecution's top two witnesses. Given enormous sums of money to pay off their home and to pay for a much needed medical procedure for their own ailing son, conveniently, neither witness can recall with certainty what they saw the night of the murder, or the murderer's automobile license number. Frustrated, the judge must release the young suspected serial killer. However, the 70-year-old widower learns of the witness buy-out. He will not let his wife's murder go unavenged. At his age, he feels he has nothing left to lose. An extremely intelligent man and an electronics expert, he secures deadly materials to build cleverly camouflaged bombs he'll use to execute the unethical lawyer, his wife, and eventually the young man who dodged a murder rap. Then he will join his wife in death by killing himself, after he finds a technique that will not hint of suicide which would degrade his family's name. Throughout High Order, each time a bomb detonates and Jim Grabowski is forced to investigate, the reader is somehow glad to see justice done, even knowing that murder for revenge is morally wrong. Of course, the old man is devastated when his killing bombs accidentally destroy the lives of innocent people. So, two deadly threads run a collision course through High Order: 1. Will the serial killer eventually be caught? 2. Will the 70-year-old widower be stopped before he kills those responsible for the infamous trial of his wife's murderer? Only the reader of this taut nerve wracking thriller will find out. By far, even though most of us consider murder wrong, I found this book hard not to read. At the beginning of the book, I thought I should NOT be reading about such atrocities: rape, murder, hatred, bombings. Yet I must confess I couldn't help myself. I had to find out what happened to the villainous men in High Order. I would recommend this book as a great read but not for the squeamish. The writing style of Mike Sutton is precise and accurate--downright gory at times--suggestive more of horror. But in the end, High Order is redeeming because it portrays an inside view into the unimaginable crimes that police and detectives must deal with, live with, look at, and try to forget; sights that most of us never have to face. Other fascinating reads: The Chimera Seed The Island Off Stony Point Fixing Forever Broken The National Contender
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