|
[ Home ]
[ About | Reviews | Search | Submit ]
I read Brian Haig's THE KINGMAKER with ping-pong feelings. As a traditional (since LeCarre) spy thriller, it has an excellent suspenseful plot to keep the reader fully engaged. It features an arrogant ambitious brigadier general, William Morrison, in prison awaiting trial as a super mole working for the Russians against the U.S. JAG Major Sean Drummond is called upon by Morrison's wife, Mary, to defend him. Mary was quite close to Drummond before she married Morrison. Morrison had been the US military attache in Moscow, where his wife was CIA chief of station. Mary's wealthy father Homer doesn't like Drummond, who in turn feels that Homer was "born with a lemon stuck so far up his ass that the stem poked out of his ear" (I tried to visualize that, but failed). Drummond is assisted by Sergeant First Class Imelda Pepperfield, a black woman who likes to hide her high education by always using low talk, which I found somewhat difficult to understand. He needs a Russian-speaking lawyer as co-counsel, so he hires a civilian, Katrina Mazorski, whose legal qualifications put her at the bottom of the ladder in the field, her previous experience being the haunting of a Washington, D.C. police precinct to get clients. He finds Katrina to be a "ballbuster," as well as "sassy, cocky, pushy, and [looking] like a Technicolor cartoon of Generation X," but she's the only Russian-speaking lawyer available. Drummond's opponent is Major Eddie Golden, whose record as a winner is exceeded only by his reputation as an insufferable gloater. Although Drummond considers his landing this type of defense assignment as a "lawyer's wet dream," [my comment: is that something desirable?] a plum that should prompt him to be "blowing ten miles of smoke up [Morrison's] ass" [my comment: whatever that means], as the case develops he sees the evidence against his client stacking up exponentially. What one of the lesser charges, adultery, lacks in quality, it more than makes up in quantity, and one wonders how Morrison found time to keep his zipper in repair much less than do any spying for either side. The army, CIA, and FBI have already found Morrison guilty, and they wonder why a trial is necessary. In getting information from Morrison, Drummond and Katrina learn that he had virtually recruited the No. 2 man, Alexi Arbatov, in Russia's SVR, successor to the KGB. Alexi is also the protégé of and like an adopted son to the chief of the SVR, Viktor Yurichenko. Although Drummond and Katrina are cleared for Top Secret, the Arbatov knowledge is so sensitive that it's questionably a criminal offense for Morrison even to breathe it to them [my comment: there are specialized clearances that start where Top Secret leaves off]; however, the defense cannot be expected to work completely in the dark. As CIA COS Mary Morrison later tells Drummond, only ten people have this information; that is, until Drummond gets it. Drummond and Katrina go to Moscow on a fact-finding mission. They talk to a number of people in the American Embassy and later set up a meeting with Arbatov. They are ambushed in the street by three men who try to kill them and succeed in killing their embassy escort, but Drummond is able to kill all three of his attackers. As Mary later tells him, "You THOUGHT you were meeting [Arbatov] in secret. Obviously you were wrong." Drummond shows himself to be a curious mixture of a man both security conscious and security naïve. He seems not to have the slightest inkling that the Russians might have bugged his hotel room and tapped his hotel telephone, so he doesn't mind calling Imelda overseas in the States to "briefly" explain what he has been doing and ask her advice. Then he and Katrina discuss Arbatov's position in the room -- so although Mary doesn't know it yet, the chances are that now far more than just ten people know of Arbatov's relations with the Americans. Back in Washington, Drummond talks to Mary, who tells him her husband is manipulating him into exposing Arbatov. Drummond says she seems to think him guilty. No, she says, but he's very vengeful, probably mad enough to burn Arbatov to get back at the CIA. Mary knows all her husband's faults, including his many sexual adventures, and she has stopped having sex with him, but when Drummond suggests that it was odd of her to stay with him, she replies, "In every other way, our marriage was strong." As I said, my views on this story are quite mixed. It gets more exciting, but I don't want to give it away. Drummond kills three more bad guys in the States and then he and Katrina have to go to Moscow again, where the suspense tightens and they get in big trouble. The author has done a good job here and throughout in writing an exciting plot. It's a pity that his work is vitiated in part by too many implausibilities. We might divide readers of this book in three parts: 1) those who know little about the real spy business and accept everything as written, allowing them to fully enjoy the plot, 2) those who know enough to see the implausibilities, but don't let them interfere with their enjoyment of a good exciting story, and 3) those, like me, who know about the spy business and can appreciate the suspense but cannot enjoy the full story because of the distraction of the implausibilities. Okay, I understand that spy stories are generally full of implausibilities (which is why I seldom read them), but I thought that in view of the background of the author, THE KINGMAKER might be closer to those few really superb ones, such as THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD. Brian Haig, the son of General Alexander Haig, the former secretary of state, is a retired career army officer himself. Reading between the lines I get the impression that he has had a number of clandestine assignments and that he is knowledgeable of the overall espionage industry. Why, then, for example, does he seem to have CIA's DD/I instead of DD/O in charge of covert operations? Why does he have Drummond so naïve about routine security precautions? Why does he have the extremely intelligent and cagy chief of the SVR come to the States in such a way (that is, apparently without diplomatic immunity) so that he makes himself susceptible to being subpoenaed by Drummond (he could travel under a false name and still have a diplomatic passport). Why does the author have some of the most incriminating evidence against Morrison in the form of original documents with Morrison's fingerprints on them supposedly passed from Morrison to the Russians? -- doesn't he understand that ORIGINAL documents, as sensitive as these are said to be, must be ACCOUNTED for? Drummond thinks Mary has sent all the killers after him and Katrina: "As the former station chief in Moscow she no doubt knew enough hoodlums she could hire to take us out. And as a resident of the D.C. area all her life, she wouldn't have any trouble locating some street scum to kill us." [No doubt? There's a lot of doubt in my mind.] When Drummond is arrested by the FBI and immediately brought in to be questioned by a new FBI agent, the latter says, "Do I need to read your rights?" And he accepts Drummond's response, "Already done." In real life that FBI agent would be asking for his superiors to insert a lemon so that the stem would poke out of his ear (there's also a question of legitimate FBI jurisdiction in this incident). I object to the assumption in this story that the FBI and CIA are allowed to go around killing Americans as they please. I find it implausible that the FBI/CIA are not around when three killers try to slaughter Drummond and Katrina, but almost immediately afterward they're on the spot to clean up the mess and hide the bodies (although for no understandable reason). There's at least one main player who is entirely out of character, but that might be a spoiler. There's also some highly implausible use of disguise to advance the plot. Who is Mary kidding when she sends her children to Wyoming so they would not have to learn that their father is accused of being a traitor? -- don't they have TV in Wyoming? Some parts of the writing and editing are careless. P. 263: "No sensible attorney takes the first offer ... Even Eddie would be disappointed if I didn't try to up the ante." But p. 264 in continuing the same scene: "I was bluffing, but it looked like it was working ... The overconfident bastard must've thought I'd just lie down and take whatever he had to offer." On p. 324 "Morrison stood behind" should be "Martin stood behind." I also find some of the similes out of place and not too intelligible. Haig seems to know what he is writing about, which is good, but too often he sacrifices verisimilitude to the expediency of developing a suspenseful story, and I can't help but feel that it might be due to not wanting to take the time and effort that would have been necessary to make his narration more realistic. If he'd take any advice from the likes of me, he'd continue his successful plotting while also paying careful attention to the details. When I itemize some of the things I didn't like, they look like more of a problem than they really are. It would not have taken too much additional effort to make this good story a much better one.
Reviewed by Eugene Aubrey Stratton, January 2003
[ Top ]
QUICK SEARCH:
Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
[ About | Reviews | Search | Submit ]
[ Home ]
| 
