The Last Phoenix

June 24, 2002
Maestro of the military thriller, Herman (The Trojan Sea) offers a panoramic, jet-propelled epic long on battles, political intrigue and, unfortunately, tangential subplots. Reprising their roles from Edge of Honor, Maddy Turner, the beleaguered first female president of the United States, and her secret lover, retired air force general Matt Pontowski, are the heroes of this new novel, which opens in the near future with the president in the final months of a hard-fought reelection campaign. A sudden Chinese invasion of Malaysia is quickly followed by an attack on Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates by an alliance of Iraq, Iran and Syria. Hampered by cut-to-the-bone peacetime budgets, the U.S. military doesn't have the resources to respond to wars on both fronts. When troops are dispatched to protect U.S. interests in the oil-rich Middle East, Maddy is left with no regular military to combat the Chinese and is forced to ask Matt to reactivate his old American Volunteer Group—a ragtag collection of pilots flying A-10 Warthogs—to hold back the Chinese until the regular military can be brought up to strength. The story cuts from Washington to Malaysia and other points on the globe in a rapid-fire montage. An expert at fast-paced action, Herman does a passable job keeping technobabble to a minimum, but there are too many bloodstained subplots with comic book characters. Matt's implausible escape and his heroics with a broken collarbone make the end more fizzle than bang.