Rating: 
Summary: Sean Dummond is back and better than ever!
Review: Brian Haig has written a compulsively readable novel in Private Sector and one that, if there is any justice, should be headed straight to the top of all the bestseller lists. Haig has taken his protagonist, the cynical and salty JAG officer Sean Drummond, into the civilian world as the Army loans him out to a high profile white shoe law firm in the nation's Capital. Before you can say "fish out of water" Haig has Drummond up to his collar tabs in a plot of corporate greed and duplicity worthy of Grisham around the time he wrote The Firm. Haig's plot is imaginative without ever straining credulity and the characters cast in the roles of villain are never cartoonish. The author wisely keeps most of the real villains of the piece (with two notable exceptions) off stage most of the time and has their lawyers function as their surrogates. Major Sean Drummond is his usual tart-tongued self, in contrast to all the self-important white shoe law firm types, and is welcome contrast to nearly every character around him. His descriptions of the Machiavellian machinations of lawyers and corporate honchos to keep a corporate ship afloat ring all too true in the world after Enron, Worldcom,and Global Crossing. Sean Drummond's bluntness and sense of fairness are a welcome change from the glut of morally compromised lawyers who seem to populate much of modern fiction. With Private Sector, Brian Haig has hit a home run.
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Summary: Another winner
Review: Brian Haig is one of the best suspense/mystery writers on today's market. This his fourth Sean Drummond story, shows that he hasn't succumbed to formulaic drivel like so many others. Drummond remains smart, passionate and entertaining as he figures out the bad guys.
I do wonder why the police never commented on the condition of Lisa's tire and what it meant though.
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Summary: it gets better and better
Review: i can't wait for the next installment of major sean drummond....this is a real page-turner..a must read...all the other reviews are right on the spot...
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Summary: One of the best.
Review: I have high praise for Brian Haig's "Private Sector" and his character, Sean Drummond. I am reminded of two books, John Grisham's "The King of Torts" and Nelson DeMille's "The Lion's Game."The former 'King of Torts' comes to mind because of the seduction of money. Here, albeit unlikely, Drummond is the antithesis of what the staid Washington corporate lawfirm he joins represents, when he is given a chance to participate in a 'lend lease' program initiated by the Armed Forces. Drummond is a rough and tumble JAG attorney and stumbles around the lawfirm insulting venerated partners, offending women with copies of the latest EEOC decisions clutched to their chests, and generally if not being a pain in their behinds, at least a thorn in their sides. But one thing Major Drummond doesn't fool around with is his loyalty to his friends. So when his associate in JAG Lisa Morrow is murdered in a botched parking lot robbery at the Pentagon, Drummond begins to link apparently unrelated clues. And, unlike Clay Carter in 'Torts,' he is shamelessly uninterested in money. As he digs deeper he is offered millions to "join" the firm however he remains undeterred and steadfast in his goal, finding Lisa's killer wherever it leads him. Drummond hooks up with Warrent Officer Daniel Spinelli, sort of a Dennis Franz character not unlike Detective Supawitz in NYPD Blue. Drummond reminds me of John Corey in 'The Lion's Game' because he is one of the funniest private eyes (so to speak) since Corey was created by DeMille. I have to admit I laughed out loud on more than a few occasions. A very good read and highly recommended. Five stars. Larry Scantlebury
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Summary: Love wisecracks
Review: I just love wise-cracking protagonists; they have a skill I've never been able to develop. Sean Drummond is the JAG attorney creation of Brian Haig, son of Alexander (you know, of "Don't worry, Alex is here. I'm in charge, so nothing to worry about" fame), but I won't hold that against him.
Major Drummond has been asked to spend a year working for a private law firm - Culper, Hutch, and Westin - that represent some of the District of Columbia's most respectable institutions, as an experiment in army/private sector cooperation. The fact that he is unpopular with his army superiors for his sharp tongue and insubordination might also have had something to do with it. Drummond begins irritating his stuffed shirt bosses from the moment he arrives. He figures if he makes himself sufficiently unpopular, he can get himself kicked out of the program, where he follows in the footsteps at the law firm of Lisa Morrow, another JAG officer and Sean's erstwhile old flame.
Lisa had been killed in the Pentagon parking lot just before a dinner date that Sean hopes might rekindle some of the former embers. Her death is followed by three others, all the ostensible work of a serial killer whose modus operandi appears very similar to that of the LA Killer of several years before, i.e., the victims' necks had all been snapped. There was no apparent connection between the victims.
Sean, in the meantime has become embroiled in an audit of Morris Telecommunications, a company that has retained his law firm. Sean discovers some unusual financial arrangements, but he has no reason to suspect anything particularly nefarious until his brother, a financial wizard with spreadsheets, points out that several "swaps" on Morris's books put Sean's firm in some financial jeopardy. (Swaps are what sank Enron. Basically, two entities get together to show revenue on their books for the largely insubstantial use of each other's services. It's a way of propping up income statements to keep stock prices up, all legal according to generally accepted accounting principles, but another reason to shoot the accountants before going after the lawyers. :)) ) Drummond also begins to realize that the firm's attorneys might be capitalizing on his inexperience with corporate law to set him up as a fall guy. They to reckon without his long experience as a criminal attorney for the army.
In the meantime, Janet Morrow, Lisa's sister and assistant district attorney in Boston, has decided to follow the investigation into her sister's death from close up. She and Sean discover that Lisa's emails had been hidden and quarantined in the firm's network behind a secure firewall. Sean is accused of malfeasance by the firm, but by some not-so-subtle pressure on the privates of his boss (in a very funny scene), Sean extorts the help of the firm's computer expert to examine Lisa's emails. It's there that he discovers a link between the victims. Lisa had known all of them.
Soon Drummond is snared in a mesh of conflicting loyalties, as he discovers that some governmental agencies are involved in some very secret business. A fun read. Drummond is a great character who ranks with Nelson DeMille's wiseacre CID investigator.
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Summary: (4.5) Another Action Thriller by an Underappreciated Author
Review: I was hooked on Brian Haig's central character JAG lawyer Sean Drummond when I read THE KINGMAKER (five star review of 5/13/03); thus, I resolved to read the earlier books in the series to watch both the character development and changes in the author's technique and style. I subsequently finished SECRET SANCTION (3.5 star review of 7/30/03) and found it enjoyable but not nearly in the same class as THE KINGMAKER. Before I could get to MORTAL ALLIES (#2 in the series), PRIVATE SECTOR was published and I decided to read it before starting the earlier book. I highly recommend both the author and this book, although for reasons summarized at the end of this review (some of which may be entirely personal) I did not find it as completely enjoyable as THE KINGMAKER. But it is a fast moving, excellently plotted, well crafted story and continues the character development of Sean Drummond, who has the potential to be one of the enduring protagonists of this genre. When Major Drummond is notified by his boss, General Clapper, that he is being assigned to the PRIVATE SECTOR law firm Cupler, Hutch, and Westin under a "loan out" program whose supposed goal is to broaden the experience of the JAG staff while creating goodwill in the public sector, he immediately begins to plot the best method to sabotage the assignment without creating such enmity between himself and Clapper that he effectively terminates his Army career. He realizes that the combination of his natural personality traits should easily be able to be honed to accomplish the task, and immediately begins to alienate those with whom he comes into contact. The one interesting element of the assignment is that Sean is replacing fellow officer Lisa Morrow, whom he has come to know and respect during previous assignments and for whom he harbors a great deal of apparently unrequited affection. When Lisa indicates a desire to meet Sean, he is both curious about what aspects of her experience at Cupler he needs to be briefed and hopeful that she may be more attracted to him than he expected. Unfortunately, their meeting never occurs due to Lisa's apparently random murder in a DC parking lot (this minor spoiler is included because it is revealed on the book jacket) and Sean immediately decides he should supplement the efforts of the DC police and the CID ( the Army's Criminal Investigation Division) in investigating Lisa's death. Since he quickly comes to believe that Lisa's death may be related to Lisa's work at Cupler, he realizes that in order to effectively further his goal of catching Lisa's killer he has remain in the good graces of both the partners of Cupler and General Clapper, not at all an easy task for Sean. As the cliché goes, the plot quickly thickens as further increasingly brutal and apparently random murders occur. Meanwhile Sean is involved in helping the firm's largest client, Morris Networks, a telecommunications firm spawned during the financial market and technological excesses of the nineties successfully win a major government contract. He soon suspects that Lisa's death and the other murders might somehow be related to Cupler 's representation of Moriss and it's "new economy" CEO Jason Morris. As the story unfolds, there are as usual in Haig's novels many excellent lines from Sean, a well thought out although convoluted plot, and a knowledgeable and quite informative discussion of the latest uses of sophisticated financial instruments and their accounting implications (a la Enron, which is mistakenly referred to as Exxon). This is an enjoyable and well told story; although I had the advantage of understanding the business aspects of the plot the details are not essential to the story. (I also had the disadvantage of knowing enough to be aggravated at his admittedly minor mistakes.) The author did excellent research and his information is essentially correct with regard to both the details and the overview. However, I was disappointed by the anti-corporate tone of the book, there are basically no honorable people either at Morris or Cupler. In addition, Sean's idiosyncratic characteristics actually were a little overdone at times during the early part of the story and stretched cleverness to the edge of inaneness, which bordered on losing credibility. My only major criticism is the technique of writing this story with Sean as the first party narrator but interspersing segments where the killer became the narrator. (There was no confusion when this occurred, it was identified with a change in typeface. I just found it a little disconcerting although I understand the author's reasons for utilizing the technique.) So, I highly recommend this book as a good legal/action mystery by a talented author. You will benefit from reading the earlier books in the series prior to this, but that is not at all necessary. But if you only have time for one Brian Haig book, I recommend THE KINGMAKER instead as a superior read. (It is now in paperback.) Tucker Andersen
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Summary: Sean Drummond is back at it again!
Review: Major Sean Drummond has become one of my favorite fictional characters. In his latest adventure, Drummond is sent to work in a private law firm through a military program that sends its officers into the private sector to ensure they are exposed to the latest in the private practice of the law. This book differs from the previous novels in that it takes place solely in the United States (as compared to Russia, Korea, and Serbia). However, the lack of an exotic foreign location does not take away from the wit and action that I have come to expect from Brian Haig. Soon, Drummond is involved in the investigation of the murder of an old colleague which, of course, leads to a much bigger conspiracy that Drummond never saw coming. A great read!
Rating: 
Summary: strong action thriller
Review: Major Sean Drummond loves the army and his job as a defense attorney representing soldiers in black-ops who broke the law. His boss General Clapper needs a rest from the major and his enthusiasms that always seem to get out of hand so he takes advantage of a loan out program where army lawyers work for a year in a civilian corporation. He arranges a date with his predecessor in the loan out program but before he can meet her, she is viciously murdered in the Pentagon parking lot. Her sister Janet, also an attorney, comes to town and teams up with the major to try and find Lisa's killer. While working on a case for the law firm, he gathers some information from Lisa's computer that might lead to her killer and in the process gets the army, the FBI, the CIA and several corporate and criminal attorney's very angry at him for interfering in their business. Anyone who likes an action thriller won't want to miss reading PRIVATE SECTOR. The protagonist is unique and refreshing with a memorable sense of humor that will have the audience chuckling out loud in the middle of a very tense scene. He is not a rebel but he likes doing things his way and that always gets him in trouble with his superiors. Brian Haig has written a work that will return him to the bestseller lists. Harriet Klausner
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Summary: The Best Book in the Drummond Series Thus Far
Review: PRIVATE SECTOR is the fourth of Brain Haig's novels to feature Major Sean Drummond, the redoubtable military lawyer whose presence in the Armed Forces seems to be the result of jamming an irresistible round peg into an immovable square-holed pegboard. Drummond is a smart aleck, and a brilliant one. Yet, his flip outward demeanor belies a tenacious attitude for righting wrongs and pursuing the truth, all the while steadfastly refusing to color within the lines. He would rather redraw them to fit the situation. Drummond accordingly seems a somewhat unlikely choice to be loaned out to a high-powered, buttoned-up Washington, D.C. law firm pursuant to a joint U.S. government private sector program called "Working With Industry." The loan out program seems well intentioned. The Army sends one of their best and brightest attorneys to the private law firm for one year in order to expose the attorney to other areas of practice, while the law firm gets another brilliant mind to work with. The results are darkly hilarious. Drummond is like a fish out of water almost from the minute he walks into the offices of Culper, Hutch, and Westin, and all the perks --- from the corner office to the company sports car --- can't make him walk the straight and narrow. Drummond figures that he can be just obnoxious enough to be sent back to the Army in a week or two. All of this changes, however, when Lisa Morrow is murdered. Morrow is Drummond's fellow JAG officer and his predecessor in the Working With Industry project. She is also the object of Drummond's love/lust interest. Drummond was to meet Morrow on the night she was murdered. He in fact carries some guilt over the murder, given that he was late for their meeting. His timeliness might have prevented her death. Drummond finds that the offices of Culper, Hutch, and Westin contain resources ideal for investigating Morrow's murder. Within days, however, more women are found slaughtered in apparently unrelated murders. Drummond slowly comes to the realization that the path of the murderer leads back to the doors of his private sector employer and the firm's biggest client, a communications firm on the verge of signing a contract with the Pentagon that has a potential value of billions of dollars. Drummond finds himself in a position where he can trust absolutely no one --- except for a rough-around-the-edges CID Agent named Dan Spinelli, with whom Drummond establishes a grudging camaraderie, and Morrow's sister Janet, a brilliant, capable and beautiful ADA from Boston. Drummond finds that in order to stop the murders and bring justice to Lisa Morrow, he will have to put himself --- and Janet --- in the path of mortal harm as they are pursued by a foe with apparently limitless resources and almost inhuman skill. Haig's decision to move Drummond into private practice, if only temporarily, is brilliant. Drummond is a fish out of water, even in his own sea, and letting him play with the sharks in the ocean of private practice gives Drummond plenty of room to exhibit his always rapier-sharp wit. Haig also veers away from courtroom drama here, another welcome variation from his previous novels. And for those of us who wondered if Drummond would ever become lucky in love ... well, that appears to be the case toward the end of the novel. The best book in what has proven to be an excellent series to date, PRIVATE SECTOR has it all. --- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub
Rating:
Summary: Entertaining and fun
Review: Stellar voice performers John Rubinstein and Michael Emerson give can't-stop-listening-to readings of this thoroughly entertaining thriller. Happily, author Haig reprises his attractive but prickly hero Sean Drummond. An Army attorney Drummond seems to thrive on being a burr under anyone and everyone's saddle. He's loaned out to a prestigious Washington, D.C. law firm where he proceeds to nettle and needle. There's not a one of his new compadres with whom he has anything in common, although the perks and office space are commendable. JAG officer Lisa Morrow is brutally killed. Murdered, in fact, when she's going to meet Drummond. He has barely begun investigating this crime when other professional women are murdered and Drummond realizes there's a psycho serial killer on the loose.
In addition, he is beginning to detect a foul odor emanating from the firm's most important client. Something is not only wrong - it's dead wrong. Soon the indefatigable Drummond finds himself in the middle of doings more heinous than any he has ever seen. A fast paced narrative and rapid fire action propel Haig's latest.
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