This post is part of Litfuse’s blog tour for Rule of Law.
~ About the Book ~
For the members of SEAL Team Six, it was a rare mission ordered by the president, monitored in real time from the Situation Room. The Houthi rebels in Yemen had captured an American journalist and a member of the Saudi royal family. Their executions were scheduled for Easter Sunday. The SEAL team would break them out.
But when the mission results in spectacular failure, the finger-pointing goes all the way to the top.
Did the president play political games with the lives of U.S. service members?
Paige Chambers, a determined young lawyer, has a very personal reason for wanting to know the answer. The case she files will polarize the nation and test the resiliency of the Constitution. The stakes are huge, the alliances shaky, and she will be left to wonder if the saying on the Supreme Court building still holds true.
Equal justice under law.
It makes a nice motto. But will it work when one of the most powerful people on the planet is also a defendant?
Genre: Legal Thriller
Release date: 5 September 2017
Pages: 473
Publisher: Tyndale House
Amazon US // Amazon AU // iBooks // Goodreads // Koorong
~ Excerpt ~
Wyatt shrugged. “Actually, I was thinking about just filing suit.”
Paige gave him a courtesy chuckle, but he didn’t appear to be kidding. Wellington kept his head down, typing like mad.
“Wellington here tells me we don’t have much chance of success,” Wyatt said. He snuffed out the stub of his cigar and flicked it in the fire. “Says the president has absolute immunity. Says that soldiers involved in combat activities can’t file suit against government officials. Something called the Feres Doctrine. He’s got all kinds of reasons a lawsuit won’t work.”
Paige hadn’t even considered a lawsuit. What was the point in that?
“It doesn’t sound like a lawsuit would stand a chance,” she said.
“I told Wellington to find some exceptions,” Wyatt said. “I’m not about to turn this over to some congressional committee that we don’t control. If I file a lawsuit, I’m in control of the investigation.
“Not if it gets thrown out on a motion to dismiss,” Paige countered. “It will just make the Anderson family look bad.”
“You don’t have to join us. In fact, it’d probably be better if you didn’t.”
“You don’t have to worry about that,” Paige said.
This was exactly the kind of thing she was concerned about. Wyatt Jackson was in it for the publicity. He was going to use this tragedy to get his name out there and claim his fifteen minutes of fame. And Paige couldn’t talk him out of it. Even though Wellington lent some tepid support, all of her arguments fell on deaf ears.
Wyatt finished his beer and tossed it toward a trash can, missing badly. “You sure I can’t get you one?” he asked Paige.
She just shook her head. His act was getting old.
“Sometimes you’ve got to start a fight to figure out how to win the fight,” Wyatt said.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Wyatt had his hands burrowed in the pockets of his windbreaker now. He was rubbing Clients’s belly with his foot.
“I’m not going to some congressman so they can nibble away at this in endless committee meetings. I’m going to sue these clowns for a few hundred million and get their attention. We’ll just punch them in the nose and see what happens. Like I said, sometimes you can’t figure out your strategy for winning a fight until the fight gets started. And this . . . well, this should be a heckuva good fight.”
~ Review ~
Why, oh why has it taken me so long to pick up a novel by Randy Singer?! I love a good legal thriller, and nothing says legal thriller quite like a military widow suing the president of the United States! From the use of drones to target and neutralize individual threats, to governmental accountability in matters of security, all the way through to honouring those who have given their lives in service for their country and the loved ones they have left behind, it was a gripping, intellectually stimulating, and in a few instances, emotional read.
Plot aside, the thing that gave this novel an extra edge, as far as I was concerned, was the teaming of lawyers Paige Chambers and Wyatt Jackson. Paige is a cautious and serious prosecuting attorney in the Virginia Court of Appeals, only four years out of law school. And when I say serious, I mean she gets so nervous before a big hearing that she literally makes herself sick. (Yes, I mean literally, not figuratively!)
Wyatt Jackson is her antithesis—a sixty-five-year-old veteran defence attorney who ‘hated the government and turned every case into World War III.’ He ‘combined the charm of a Southern gentleman with the hide of a mountaineer’ and ‘was the kind of lawyer everyone loved to hate until they needed one.’ And yet, as the novel goes on the reader discovers there are some surprising qualities buried below the bluster and showmanship. And I have to admit, he’s a wiley lawyer, even if I tended to share Paige’s caution and doubts more often than not. He was also responsible for one of the best scenes in the whole book—a courtroom scene that involved an absolutely brilliant tactic for defending his team’s innocence over the leaking of evidence given in confidence! Man, did that get my blood pumping! I think I actually pumped the air and yelled ‘BAM!’
Courtroom drama, political conspiracy, military/CIA action, and a personal and heartfelt need to know the truth makes for a gripping legal thriller!
I received a copy of this novel from Litfuse Publicity. This has not influence the content of my review, which is my honest and unbiased opinion.
~ About the Author ~
Randy Singer is a critically acclaimed author and veteran trial attorney. He has penned more than 10 legal thrillers, including his Christy award-winning debut novel, Directed Verdict, and ECPA’s 2015 Christian Book Award winner for fiction, The Advocate. He was also named a finalist, along with John Grisham and Michael Connelly, for the inaugural Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction sponsored by the American Bar Association and the University of Alabama Law School.
In addition to his law practice and writing, Randy serves as a teaching pastor for Trinity Church in Virginia Beach, Virginia. He calls it his “Jekyll and Hyde thing” — part lawyer, part pastor. He also serves as Attorney in Residence and Director of the Singer Civil Litigation Practicum at Regent Law School.
He and his wife, Rhonda, live in Virginia Beach. They have two adult children. Visit his Web site at www.randysinger.net.
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