In the Name of Honor

Starred review from March 22, 2010
Bestseller Patterson (Eclipse
) explores the concept of honor—and how men and women can sometimes embody and sometimes blacken this lofty concept—in this riveting legal thriller. When Lt. Brian McCarran shoots and kills his superior officer, Capt. Joe D'Abruzzo, at Fort Bolton in northern Virginia soon after they return from a tour in Iraq, 31-year-old Capt. Paul Terry, of the army's JAG Corps, defends the lieutenant. That the accused is the son of legendary Gen. Anthony McCarran, the current army chief of staff, makes it an especially sensitive court-martial. To complicate matters, Joe was married to Kate Gallagher, the general's goddaughter and lifelong friend of Brian and the McCarran family. Sparks fly after Brian's gorgeous older attorney sister, Meg, insists on working with Paul. As always, Patterson chooses to deal with difficult themes, this time PTSD and the war in Iraq. This is superior genre fiction from a writer at the top of his game.

July 26, 2010
A dramatic military trial is at center stage in this engrossing mystery. Lieut. Brian McCarran, a member of a distinguished military family, is on trial for shooting and killing his commanding officer. Capt. Paul Terry, an excellent trial lawyer who is on his way out of the military and into a lucrative job at a civilian law firm, is brought in as defense counsel. McCarran is claiming self-defense, but Terry knows there are secrets being kept and more to this killing than he's being told. John Bedford Lloyd reads with clear, almost clinical intonation, and this works well in the stiff question and answer phases of the trial, but not quite as well when the book moves outside the courtroom. These sections could have used a little more passion in their delivery. Still, this is a small quibble; this book is Patterson at his best, and the listener is in for a suspenseful and thought-provoking listen. A Henry Holt hardcover.