A Private War [Hardcover]

Patrick Sheane Duncan (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 30, 2002

Lieutenant Colonel Meredith Cleon's new position as Provost Marshal of Fort Hazelton seems like an easy job. As chief law enforcement officer of this soon-to-be-closed military installation, she expects to deal with nothing more challenging than a few petty thefts. Then the quiet of the small post is shattered by the brutal murder of a young woman-a general's aide.

Cleon knows that this investigation will be followed closely by the brass. Who would want to murder such a popular officer? Could the murderer have had a sexual motive? Or is there something more to this heinous crime? Meredith has to search her own past for clues, and the deeper she looks, the more her own life is put in danger.

As in his expertly told thriller Courage Under Fire, Patrick Sheane Duncan weaves a spellbinding plot, enriched by a shrewd understanding of the American military.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Director and screenwriter Duncan (Courage Under Fire) returns with an effective tale about murder on a military base in a time of downsizing. Lt. Col. Meredith Cleon, a career army officer with her eye on a general's star, is handed a crummy posting as the new provost marshal of Fort Hazelton, a decrepit Indiana base. Her first day on the job is an unusually full one: someone has brutally murdered the aide of the base's general; a smuggling operation has been uncovered; and hate-crime graffiti is turning up around the base. The latter is of particular annoyance to Colonel Levy, with whom Meredith has a sordid history. Marshaling her troops (which include a plucky female sergeant, a quasi-civilian investigator and the world's most efficient secretary), Meredith attempts to solve all the crimes at once. This is made particularly difficult by a second murder and the discovery that weapons are being stolen, possibly by a local militia. Duncan doles out Meredith's background, her reasons for staying in the military after reaching the 20-year mark and the difficulties of being a female officer. But his most pointed observations are those of a military run like a corporation, with cost-cutting measures hamstringing officers while giving tyrannical power to the managers who control the purse strings. The state of Meredith's base (and the army as a whole) is nicely summed up by one of her overworked subordinates: We're understaffed, overextended, and shortchanged, but we manage. Practically begging to be made into a film, this succeeds as a novel of intrigue on its own merits.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

The noted screenwriter's second novel--following Courage under Fire (1996), based on his screenplay for the film--has a solid story, some good characters, and some sterling dialogue. Lieutenant Colonel Meredith Cleon, Fort Hazelton's new provost marshal, is faced with three tough cases: the theft of army materiel, the dissemination of hate literature, and the vicious murder of a general's aide. Cleon must also find a way to work productively with an assortment of colleagues who, for one reason or another, seem to have taken a passionate disliking to her. All the raw material for a fine thriller is here; unfortunately, as with many early novels by established screenwriters, the book feels thin. Duncan's narrative passages often seem truncated, and his descriptions of people and places frequently read like stage directions, functioning only to get the author from one patch of dialogue to the next. Even with these flaws, though, the book is still a perfectly entertaining military thriller with an appealingly strong female protagonist. David Pitt
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 368 pages
• Publisher: Putnam Adult (May 30, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 039914885X
• ISBN-13: 978-0399148859
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.3 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #8,333,115 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Average military murder mystery, September 19, 2003

By 

Pangloss "soldierblue" (Woodstock, Georgia USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: A Private War (Paperback)

This is a fair story about a series of murders at a US army base. As in "Courage Under Fire", the main character is a female who is trying to deal with personal issues while trying to do her job. It is a fair, quick read but the plot is thin and the characters are not well developed. Wait for the movie.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars excellent military police investigation, June 8, 2002

By 

Harriet Klausner - See all my reviews
(#1 Hall OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A Private War (Hardcover)

The lieutenant colonel is career military with the common officer goal of wanting to join the elite general officer club. Lieutenant Colonel Meredith Cleon, the new provost marshal of Fort Hazleton, Indiana, doesn't think her new back water post will do anything to advance her career but she couldn't say no to the Star who requested she take the assignment.

From the moment she gets on the base, she knows she's not going to like her stay at Fort Hazelton. Her immediate superior is a man she had trouble with in the past and her aide has a problem with a woman as a boss. The day gets worse when a general's aide is found tied to a target on the range, her body riddled with bullet holes. Then the PM discovers a cache of weapons headed for Fort Knox was stolen. To add to Meredith's woe's an Afro-American and a Jew are the victims of hate crimes. Meredith wants to see if there is a common denominator to these three crimes preferably before her career goes down the tubes.

A PRIVATE WAR takes no prisoners. Everyone is either a suspect or a target and the protagonist must make sure she knows friends from foes. Patrick Sheane Duncan creates a fascinating story line, which enables readers to see what happens during a military police investigation. This is an excellent story created by an expert writer.

Harriet Klausner

3.0 out of 5 stars Let's do the time warp again, January 25, 2011

By 

Rohan Tolstrup (Canterbury, Victoria Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Private War (Hardcover)

Big question: when is this meant to be happening? References to 'Enduring Freedom' imply the book is set around time of publication, 2002. I don't remember everybody using pagers then. SMS *was* available at the time, in Australia! And our protagonist was explicitly said to have joined the US Army in '76, reaching twenty years four months ago. Did the author have the manuscript lying around for six years and just throw in a few topical references to set it in the present? So we've got somebody who was a Captain in '82 or after '83 (two conflicting references there) and is a Lieutenant Colonel (that's two promotions) whenever the present is. Can't blame her for being focussed on that next promotion - and she's portrayed as a high achiever who wants to be a hyperachiever, married to the Army, etc. Hardly rocketing through the ranks.
Incidentally, we never get real references to Meredith Cleon's age. Logically she'd be about 44 (or 38...), although all we got was internal monologue about young men not checking out women over thirty.

As for the murder mystery driving the plot, well you'd have to be a psycho to do that, so I'm not sure that it actually fits the motives given.