Man in the Middle » (Reprint)

Brian Haig is a West Point graduate and a career military strategist. Before retiring from the Army, he served as special assistant to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He has appeared as a military analyst on both MSNBC and Fox News Channel. His articles have been published in journals ranging from the New York Times to USA TODAY to Details. The son of former Secretary of State Alexander Haig, he lives in New Jersey with his wife and four children. This is his sixth novel.

For newly promoted Army lieutenant colonel Sean Drummond, his latest assignment starts off simply enough: find out if the death of one of D.C.'s most influential defense officials was murder or suicide. Most investigators would call it a cut-and-dried case, but nothing is ever that simple.


Teamed with Bian Tran, the attractive Army Military Police officer investigating the case, Drummond is about to embark on a journey that takes him from the labyrinthine channels of American intelligence to the killing rooms of Iraq. None of it will be more difficult than navigating the shadowy minds and motivations of his enemies and so-called colleagues.


What Drummond uncovers will make him question everything he believes in. Because the more he digs, the more he learns about the key players-American and Middle Eastern-in a war that rages bloodier every day. A war where betrayal is a daily occurrence and makes him ask: Are my loyalties to my superiors or to the American soldiers battling for their lives?

Publishers Weekly

Despite the intention declared in an author's note to broaden Americans' understanding of the current war in Iraq, bestseller Haig (Private Sector) delivers a routine mystery thriller that awkwardly blends fact and fiction. Lt. Col. Sean Drummond, Haig's wisecracking series hero, finds himself partnered with an exotic female military police officer, Bian Tran, when Clifford Daniels, a high-ranking Defense Department official, is found dead in his Virginia apartment, an apparent suicide. The pair soon learn that Daniels was the U.S.'s main liaison with Mahmoud Charabi, an Iraqi exile who, like the real-life Ahmed Chalabi, was a leading advocate of military action to topple Saddam Hussein. The discovery that Charabi may have been in the employ of Iranian intelligence raises the stakes for the inquiry, which takes place just weeks before the 2004 presidential election. The action detours to the Iraqi war zone before the predictable windup. (Jan.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.