In the Name of Honour

Richard North Patterson

04 February 2011
9780230758063
400 pages

Synopsis

Home from Iraq, a lieutenant kills his commanding officer – was it self-defence or pre-meditated murder?

The McCarrans and the Gallaghers, two families with deep ties to the military, have been close for decades. Now, Lt. Brian McCarran returns from a harrowing tour in Iraq. Traumatized by war-time experiences he will not reveal, Brian depends on his lifelong friendship with Kate Gallagher, who is married to Brian’s commanding officer in Iraq, Capt. Joe D’Abruzzo. But D’Abruzzo also seems changed – he’s become secretive and remote.

Tragedy strikes when Brian shoots and kills D’Abruzzo on their army post in Virginia. Brian pleads self-defence, claiming that D’Abruzzo accused him of interfering with his marriage, and attacked him. Kate supports Brian and says that her husband had become violent and abusive. But Brian and Kate have secrets of their own.

Capt. Paul Terry, an accomplished young army lawyer, will defend Brian in a high-profile court martial. His co-counsel is Meg McCarran, Brian’s sister, the brilliant, beautiful attorney determined to help save her brother. Terry soon becomes deeply entwined with Meg and the McCarrans – and learns that families, like war, can break the sturdiest of souls.

In The Name of Honor is an absolute humdinger of a murder mystery, with a you-will-never-guess twist that I greeted with pure envy. This is a beautifully crafted book that offers not merely unrelenting suspense, but a close look at the dysfunctions of military justice and of one particular family.
No one knows the courtroom better - no one writes the courtroom better - than Richard North Patterson. In the Name of Honour is a riveting tale of love and betrayal, truth and its role in a search for justice, war and its devastating effect on combatants and their families. As always, Patterson's plotting is brilliant and nuanced, his characters richly developed, and his prose is as elegant as it is gripping.

Stephen King, in one of his novels, has his main character reflect that ‘Patterson and DeMille are probably the best of the current popular novelists.' I could not agree more, and Richard North Patterson has done it again with In the Name of Honour, which will be very favourably compared to The Caine Mutiny