Customer Reviews

Man in the Middle

5 star:		(22)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(11)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

Brian Haig's "Man in the Middle" is Army Lieutenant Colonel Sean Drummond, an attorney for the Judge Advocate General Corps who is temporarily assigned to the CIA. Sean's boss wants him to investigate the death of a Defense Department civil servant named Clifford Daniels. The circumstances of Daniels' death are not clear-cut; he either took his own life or was murdered by a clever killer with a knowledge of forensics. Working with Drummond is Major Bian Tran, a member of the Military Police Corp. Tran is a beautiful and exotic woman as well as a tough soldier who completed a tour of combat duty in Iraq. Although Bian and Sean are physically attracted to one another, they develop a prickly and somewhat competitive relationship. Before long, it becomes apparent that Cliff Daniels was just one part of an intricate puzzle with many ugly elements, including espionage, ruthless ambition, betrayal, and treason.

Haig, a former special assistant to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, offers compelling background information and insightful perspective about the bloody conflict in Iraq. The author understands military matters, the workings of government bureaucracies, and the social, cultural, and religious problems plaguing the Persian Gulf. However, "Man in the Middle" is a flawed work of fiction. At four hundred and fifty pages, it is bloated novel with too much stilted banter and long-winded explanations that slow down the book's momentum considerably. It takes Haig a few hundred pages to rev up his plot, and only extremely patient readers will want to stick around for the finale. The characters are, with one or two exceptions, one-dimensional and poorly developed. To his credit, Haig delivers an exciting climax with some nifty twists that culminate in a fairly satisfying resolution. However, "Man in the Middle" earns only a marginal recommendation; it needed better editing and a tighter, more focused plot.

Sean Drummond is back. And he is mouthier, funnier, and more arrogant than ever before. As any other Brian Haig's novel, Drummond is the main protagonist, battling global conspiracies, bureaurcrats, and his own tendency to always get in the middle of everything, i.e. trouble.

Man in the Middle is not only entertaining, but also shows innate understanding of the American army workings; knowledge of the Middle Eastern region and cultures, as well as great narrative.

I am amazed at how real Brian Haig makes Drummond, with all his flaws, insight, and moral principle. If you like a good story teller and a good narrative, Man in the Middle will not disappoint you!!!

Great plotting and pacing, with the always fun (now Lt. Colonel) Drummond. As always just when most books would be winding down, Haig's is still going strong. In addition to the story lines, Haig provides interesting insights into how and why we get into our wars, including how we muck them up - and what we can and can't do after we've mucked them up. I would kill, okay, not really, but I am dying of curiosity to know for whom Haig voted in the 2008 election. If you read his books - and you should read all six in this series, you'll understand why I'm asking. I do like the Drummond/CIA assignment, but I hope we can get back to some more JAG/Courtroom antics too when and if Haig brings Drummond back.

If you pick up Brian Haig's "Man in the Middle" expecting to follow an action hero tearing through a thriller, you will be disappointed. Nominally a thriller/murder mystery, it's really a sardonically serious analysis of war, the army, bureaucracy, politics, self-deception, and the psychology and act of treason. Haig throws in a few wisecracks about the war between the sexes, too.

I've read this book twice. First, some while ago, I read it as light reading. Translation: I skimmed and skipped to find scenes that held my interest. After that first superficial read, I would have rated the book below Haig's "Mortal Allies", which in turn fell below "Private Sector", my favorite. In "Man" there was a lot of dull pontificating between the hit scenes, I had decided.

After some thought, I decided to reread "Man in the Middle", this time for a suspected, closer look at our political and military institutions, written under the guise of fiction, and leavened with the trenchant observations of our intrepid protagonist. I figured the book might also offer psychological insights into people who work at those critical institutions of our country -- IF one could allow that the views were of those of a career military officer, author Brian Haig, and not his fictional doppelganger Sean Drummond.

Most of us do not have access to a former special assistant to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who can offer us such insights. All we readers do have is the analysis, insight and machinations of a fictional construct. We must thus trust that protagonist Sean Drummond reflects some of the thinking of author/officer Brain Haig AND we must do so on nothing more than the fiction Haig has written. Tricky, tricky.

To the extent that we believe that Haig's fictional alter ego honestly portrays some of the real insights of an actual former assistant to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, we've got a ringside seat on the way our political and military institutions sometimes function. We've also got some pretty good psychological analysis to leaven the action, as of the seduction of a career bureaucrat into acts of treason.

That seduction takes very few pages, but to my mind the depth of insight into the dynamics and psychology of treason is worth the time and effort to read the book. (I mean, how many more gems might turn up?) It takes a lot of skill to draw a psychologically complex portrait of such a failed man in a few pages. This kind of performance makes Haig's book such an interesting read. That quality of writing also excuses some less convincing aspects of the book, such as the almost super human lady lead.

Haig the fiction writer is not a light weight. He camouflages serious issues amid the wisecracks in his books. They are worth spending the time to read.

I was very surprised when I didn't finish this book. I had been anxiously awaiting the release, and was disappointed when last year it wasn't published as schedule. I can't really put on finger on why I didn't like it. With the first chapter, I felt like something was off. The jokes seemed old, and I wasn't really interested in who killed Clifford Daniels, a defense department official. Maybe it was the whole suicide, murder mystery. As a reader I know that it isn't going to be suicide, so reading a couple of chapters where the characters discuss why it could be seemed a waste of time. Then Sean had to lustily eye his female counterpart- It just seemed strange to me to be lusting after someone when there is naked dead body with a bad odor in the room. So Mr. Haig, never hooked me, never really made me like the characters. I was more irritated with Sean because his dialog sounded like a broken record. I read approxmately half the book and skipped to the end.

Had to force myself though the first 100 pages. The plot line is as convoluted as the Iraq War. I'm thinking that was the real agenda of the book: Iraq is a complex mess, and here's a mystery novel with it as the setting to match. Okay. But look, I know that already, and I don't need to be pounded with it in my leisure hours when I want read a mystery novel.

Brian Haig seems to be able to take the suspense/thriller genre and make it feel fresh again. AFter reading books of this type for a while, one can become jaded and start to get the "been there - seen that" attitude but Haig is able to keep me interested and not always able to predict how things will unfold. Although not the best in the Drummond series, this is still a good read and well worth the time.