Man in the Middle [Kindle Edition]

Brian Haig (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Despite the intention declared in an author's note to broaden Americans' understanding of the current war in Iraq, bestseller Haig (Private Sector) delivers a routine mystery thriller that awkwardly blends fact and fiction. Lt. Col. Sean Drummond, Haig's wisecracking series hero, finds himself partnered with an exotic female military police officer, Bian Tran, when Clifford Daniels, a high-ranking Defense Department official, is found dead in his Virginia apartment, an apparent suicide. The pair soon learn that Daniels was the U.S.'s main liaison with Mahmoud Charabi, an Iraqi exile who, like the real-life Ahmed Chalabi, was a leading advocate of military action to topple Saddam Hussein. The discovery that Charabi may have been in the employ of Iranian intelligence raises the stakes for the inquiry, which takes place just weeks before the 2004 presidential election. The action detours to the Iraqi war zone before the predictable windup. (Jan.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Sean Drummond, the military investigator who keeps moving from job to job (as events and plot demands dictate), has been temporarily assigned to the CIA. He is still getting himself oriented when a case drops into his lap that could easily blow up in his face if he doesn't handle it diplomatically. Unfortunately, the words Drummond and diplomat rarely appear in the same sentence, but with a dead government official and an unresolved question of suicide or murder on his plate, our hero must learn the art of circumspection and learn it quickly. But when the investigation takes him deep inside the secret corridors of the intelligence community, it's straight shooting, not subtlety, that will keep him alive. The Drummond novels are big, action-packed thrillers that say something meaningful about American politics, and this one is as satisfying as its forerunners. David Pitt
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Format: Kindle Edition
• File Size: 751 KB
• Publisher: Grand Central Publishing (January 6, 2007)
• Sold by: Hachette Book Group
• Language: English
• ASIN: B000Q9INF4
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (53 customer reviews)

More About the Author

Brian Haig is the son of former US Secretary of State Alexander Haig and has been born and bred in the American military and worked all over the globe. Since retiring from duty he has been a special advisor to the Joint Chiefs of Staff and now runs a large helicopter company. He lives with his wife and four children.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Whew, what a great read., December 26, 2006

By 

Armchair Interviews (Minneapolis, MN) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Man in the Middle (Hardcover)

Sean Drummond is back, with a new rank and a new assignment, however his cynical attitude remains the same.

At the scene of what readily appears to be the suicide of a shadowy member of Washington's intelligence industry, Drummond meets a gorgeous U.S. Military Police Investigator Bian Tran. Closer examination of the scene, the body and the effects left at the scene, clue the two investigators that more is behind the death than a simple suicide of a man about to be exposed as one of the catalysts that sent the U.S. to war in Iraq.

After thorough examination of the crime scene and in-depth questioning of the victim's wife, Tran and Drummond surmise the victim was murdered, but forces above their pay grade in the Pentagon and State Department are blocking all attempts to call it anything but a suicide. Frustrated by this, Drummond finds himself in front of his own superiors, who lay out the case's intricacies in order to rein in their investigation. It all seems to begin and end with the next Prime Minister of Iraq, an ex-patriot before the war, now the most powerful man in the country, who may have switched sides and is now in bed with Iran.

Here begins an odyssey that takes Tran and Drummond to Iraq and into the deep, dark depths of U.S. operations inside the beleaguered country. As they peel away the layers of deception put up to stop them, the two investigators and the in-country soldiers and spooks tasked to assist them, encounter one deviation after another. Drummond perceives he's being set up, for what he cannot tell, but it's coming and he's powerless to stop it. Nefarious deals and random killings are a part of life in Iraq--and he is in the thick of it.

Brain Haig is able to recreate the dust, dirt and grit of Iraq as only a person that has been there can do. The deception and callous expenditure of life both inside and outside of the world's intelligence agencies is recreated into a story that hooks you from the start and keeps you reading to the end.

Armchair Interviews says: Well-set-up thrills and chills.

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Haig surpasses himself, January 2, 2007

By 

Michael S. Grollman (Princeton, NJ United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Man in the Middle (Hardcover)

It is 2004. The United States military is bogged down in a supposedly liberated Iraq trying to keep the nation from collapsing into all-out civil war. M eanwhile, back in Washington, Clifford Daniels - one of the architects of that war of liberation - has died under rather mysterious circumstances and Sean Drummond, Army JAG attorney on loan to the CIA's Office of Special Projects, is tasked with seeing exactly where the evidence surrounding Daniels' death may lead...And, as Drummond's luck would have it, it leads him to Baghdad's Green Zone and a tangled web of deceit and deadly lies.

It is not hyerpbole to state that there is not likely to be a work of fiction this year that will be as timely or, in many ways, as heartbreaking as Brian Haig's Man in the Middle. There is a saying that sometimes the only way to speak truth is through fiction and Brian Haig, within the framework of a crackling-good murder mystery, shines a bright and sometimes harsh light on some of the ugly truthes of war in general and this war in particular.

Without a single polemical word - or even once breaking stride from his breakneck plot - Haig shows us how the noble motives that led the United States into Iraq quickly unraveled due to lack of clear objectives and proper planning in support of same and how the price of such folly is paid with the blood of too many young men and women.

With each successive novel, Brian Haig grows more and more impressive as a storyteller and now, with Man in the Middle, he tells not only a whale of a good story, but an important one as well.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Highly Recommended!!, March 27, 2007

By 

John R. Linnell (New Gloucester, ME United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Man in the Middle (Hardcover)

As with most things involving Iraq, I suspect that the views one has in our involvement there, color how one views many things, including a fictionalized thriller/mystery which uses the Iraq war and it's aftermath as it's template.

I found this latest Sean Drummond novel to be fascinating reading from the who-done-it point of view as well as the historical and political understanding that the author shows about the wheels within wheels that are involved in that conflict.

It is difficult to explain the plot of the novel without unnecessarily giving away the story. Others have done so with varying degrees of success and I have simply decided to say that I found this to be a very well written, interesting, informative and hard to put down novel.

I hope you find it to be that as well, if you chose to buy it.