Traitor

A stunning terror bombing strikes a research facility in France, a much-admired African-American general is killed in a hit-and-run accident, and Pentagon staff officer John Reynolds finds an old friend--now an influential lobbyist--drunk and fearful. In short order, Reynolds must face a car bombing at his front door, his girlfriend's murder, and the wrath of a retired Green Beret general as scarred as he is inexplicably wealthy. Struggling to behave honorably--and to resist a beauty as corrupt as any human being on earth--Reynolds finds himself at the center of an international plot to sell the Pentagon the most expensive fighter aircraft in history . . . even though the weapon may not work. In homage to the great noir fiction of Hammett, Chandler, and Cain, Ralph Peters has written the most rapid-fire, hard-hitting novel of his career--a story of Washington corruption that could have been lifted from today's headlines.

"I do not imagine that a one-man crusade disguised as a thriller can change much," says Ralph Peters, career soldier turned bestselling author, in an afterward to Traitor. Maybe not, but everybody on the Beltway who deals with (or votes on) defense budget issues should read this beautifully crafted story about a man of principle trying against all odds to do the right thing.

Lieutenant Colonel John Reynolds is "one of a legion of staff officers sweating blood to keep an underfunded Army alive." The army is faced with even more savage budget cuts if a project called NGFB (Next Generation Fighter Bomber) gets the approval that its corporate sponsor, Macon-Bolt Industries, seeks. Two of Reynolds's old Army buddies--a general and a former officer turned lobbyist for Macon-Bolt--die suddenly and suspiciously. But it's not until his own live-in ladyfriend, singer Tish O'Malley, is killed by a car bomb that Reynolds begins to realize his own life has somehow become linked with the fate of NGFB.

There are some superb scenes of action and many worthy opponents, especially a totally believable military madman called Roscoe "Punchy" Hunt who destroys works of art for dramatic effect. But the real villain in Traitor is a giant military-industrial-political complex determined to suck up as much public money as it can. People like Reynolds and Peters can only nip at its heels. The author has also expressed his strong opinions in the acclaimed nonfiction book Fighting for the Future: Will America Triumph? --Dick Adler