Sean Drummond is a cocky Army lawyer with a long history in the secret world of special operations. When the legal maverick is assigned by the top brass to investigate a Bosnian massacre in which a Green Beret A-team and the Kosovo Liberation Army detachment they were "advising" got trapped behind Serbian lines, he gets the subtext that's part of his orders. What the Army doesn't need are headlines about the cold-blooded execution of 35 Serbian soldiers, and they're counting on Drummond to clean things up fast, before a public scandal blows dirt all over their medals. Drummond is provided with two associates to help with the investigation: an attractive young woman captain who's a Harvard Law School graduate, and an equally illustrious Judge Army General's Corps lawyer whose reputation precedes him.
Once Drummond and his team get to Bosnia, it's clear that the accused Green Berets have their own cover-up going, and they're not going to make it easy for the lawyers to figure out what happened. Drummond has a few tricks up his own sleeve, and when he finds out that his CO has put a spy on his team, he's even more determined to get to the bottom of what really went on, even if he has to bully his way out of a murder frame-up to do it. The moral dilemma Drummond faces when he learns the real story (and understands why the Army is so desperate to keep the cover-up going) reveals the man behind the maverick, and lifts Brian Haig's novel a cut above the genre. Haig might have spent more time making his secondary characters as interesting as his protagonist and tightened up his narrative. Still, fans of military thrillers will find this a good enough read. --Jane Adams
From Publishers Weekly
Brian Haig, son of former secretary of state Alexander Haig, takes aim at the bestseller lists with Secret Sanction, a military/legal thriller set against the backdrop of the Bosnian conflict. Hotshot army lawyer Sean Drummond is assigned to investigate the massacre of 35 Serbian soldiers, apparently by a team of Green Berets. He encounters resistance from the brass right away and the deeper he digs, the worse it gets. Sexual tension with army defense attorney Lisa Morrow and the execution-style death of a reporter who's covering the case add to the high-stakes excitement. If blurbs by Jack Higgins and Jeffery Deaver are any indication, this one's going to be a hit. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
In Kosovo, 35 Serbian soldiers have been massacred in cold blood, and an American Special Forces unit is suspected of the crime. With the world looking on, Maj. Sean Drummond heads a small investigating team and confronts murder, cover-ups, and pressures to rush to a judgment that Drummond feels is wrong. This first novel by the son of former Secretary of State Alexander Haig is a fast-paced and exciting story of an ugly little war in which there are very few rules and nothing is black or white. Haig skillfully blends multiple layers of threat, blood feud, and collusion, as well as murder, race hatred, vengeance, and mutiny. Apart from his overlong fleshing out of central character Drummond, Haig has fashioned an excellent military legal thriller in the tradition of Herman Wouk's classic The Caine Mutiny and John Katzenbach's Hart's War. For all collections. Robert Conroy, Warren, MI Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From AudioFile
This first novel by Brian Haig, military strategist and son of former Secretary of State Alexander Haig, paints a picture of conspiracy in Bosnia. Military attorney Sean Drummond is assigned to probe the case of a U.S. Special Forces team accused of massacring 35 enemy soldiers. Jack Rubenstein reads the novel, told in the first person through Drummond's eyes, with a smart-alecky bravado and keen intelligence that give way to doubts as the case takes surprising turns. As character and situation prove more complicated than first indicated, Rubenstein gives both a touch of humanity that goes well with the suspense. J.A.S. © AudioFile 2001, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine
From Booklist
Fans of military legal dramas such as Herman Wouk's Caine Mutiny (1952) or the more-recent Hart's War (1999) by John Katzenbach will be thrilled by this first novel. Written by the son of former U.S. Secretary of State Alexander Haig, the novel is set in Bosnia, where a Special Forces A-Team is accused of ambushing, and murdering, 35 Serbian soldiers. Sean Drummond, a JAG lawyer with a few secrets in his past, is in charge of the investigation. His mission: determine whether charges should be laid against the Special Forces team or whether, as the team claims, it was defending itself against an imminent Serbian attack. The novel has plenty of politics, plenty of excitement, and plenty of first-rate suspense. Drummond is a no-nonsense lawyer who combines intelligence with gumption and penetrates to the heart of the case while simultaneously managing to anger or offend nearly everyone in his path. He is immensely likable and deserves his own series. Legal-thriller readers will line up for this one, and word-of-mouth will generate plenty of requests. David Pitt
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Secret Sanction FROM OUR EDITORS
Sent to Bosnia to investigate an army massacre of Serbian troops, Sergeant Sean Drummond knows that the last thing that anyone wants is justice. But once on the scene, this lawyer realizes that sometimes cover-ups contain cover-ups. Special-op excitement.
FROM THE PUBLISHER
It was the most horrifying military atrocity since My Lai - an elite US army special forces team positioned behind enemy lines had violated standing orders and butchered a patrol of twenty-five Serbian soldiers in cold blood. Worse, survivors of the initial attack had been shot in the back of the head, and one decapitated corpse had been left on the battlefield.
No explanation, and no obvious motive, but repercussions were already global. Now Major Sean Drummond, military lawyer, has to go to Kosovo and find out just what happened on that fateful afternoon. But with CIA obstruction, army hostility, the murder of a top journalist and a possible traitor in his own crew, Drummond quickly finds himself over his head and under serious fireﾽ
SYNOPSIS
Word of Honor meets A Few Good Men in this gripping thriller that pits the Green Berets, the CIA and the U.S. government against a top Army lawyer conducting an investigation everyone wants quashed.
FROM THE CRITICS
AudioFile
This first novel by Brian Haig, military strategist and son of former Secretary of State Alexander Haig, paints a picture of conspiracy in Bosnia. Military attorney Sean Drummond is assigned to probe the case of a U.S. Special Forces team accused of massacring 35 enemy soldiers. Jack Rubenstein reads the novel, told in the first person through Drummond's eyes, with a smart-alecky bravado and keen intelligence that give way to doubts as the case takes surprising turns. As character and situation prove more complicated than first indicated, Rubenstein gives both a touch of humanity that goes well with the suspense. J.A.S. (c) AudioFile 2001, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
Just when you thought it was safe to regard the legal thriller as moribund, along comes this stunning debut to re-breathe life into it. Major Sean Drummond, a former combat infantryman turned Army lawyer, gets assigned a case he doesn't much care for. Who could? It has career-breaker draped over it like a pup tent. The Judge Advocate General's Corp (read: JAG), which he's attached to, has posted him to Bosnia where a US Special Forces team is waiting for him to decide whether it's guilty of mass murder. Thirty-five Serbs have been found dead, bullets fired into their brains from close range, a carbon copy St. Valentine's Day massacre transferred to the Balkans. At least that's what the Serbs have begun to claim, fingering the Green Berets in a series of increasingly uncomfortable press conferences. Is all that part of a propaganda shuffle, or has the Geneva Conference indeed been flouted? It doesn't take long for Drummond to realize that there are agendas within agendas, that gimlet eyes are trained on him as unrelentingly as his own attention is focused on evidence sifting, and that he might well have become someone's idea of a custom-made sacrificial lamb. Why, for instance, are so many highly placed people suddenly hostile to him? Why does he get the unsettling sense that of the two hotshot legal guns reporting to him, one is a definite mole? And why, whenever the nine Green Berets profess their innocence, do they seem so thoroughly . . . coached? But Drummond, a combination hard-nose and closet romantic, doggedly pursues his investigation. His tone is sardonic, his expectations far from great—a stance predictable in a man who values honor while having to cope with a societythat merely pays it lip service. Well written and briskly paced, while in addition raising, evocatively, the ever-interesting question about whether loyalty is allowed to be blind.
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