Burden of Proof

Rating:
Summary: superb space ship military legal thriller
Review: An explosion occurs on the galactic cruiser USS Michaelson, killing Chief Petty Officer Asher and destroying much of the Forward Engineering section. While repairs are made, an inquiry into the accident occurs. The investigation team concludes that Asher violated regulations by working solo.

However, legal officer Lieutenant Junior Grade Paul Sinclair hears rumors from distraught sailors that they not only mourn the loss of a peer, but they have lost confidence in the leadership as it seems to the crew that a big cover-up happened. Everyone insists that Asher followed orders given by rising superstar Lieutenant Scott Silver the son of a very powerful Rear Admiral. Paul knows that the BURDEN OF PROOF is on him. However, all the JUST DETERMINATION in the galaxy could lead to the destruction of his own career and the end of his relationship with the woman he loves, the daughter of the head of the investigation team because if Paul succeeds it will embarrass the officer he wants as a father-in-law.

John G. Henry has pioneered a new sub-genre with his superb space ship military legal thrillers. As with the first tale (JUST DETERMINATION), BURDEN OF PROOF is more a tour of duty than an action packed tale as the plot focuses on relationships on an outer space vessel. The story line cleverly enables the audience to ride along with the crew and taste the pressure of the vastness of space inside relatively tight quarters, the seemingly endless stretches of time, and the protocol of rank. The legal aspects are brilliantly intertwined within a fantastic relationship military science fiction drama that should promote Mr. Hemry to a best selling admiral.

Harriet Klausner

Rating:
Summary: superb space ship military legal thriller
Review: An explosion occurs on the galactic cruiser USS Michaelson, killing Chief Petty Officer Asher and destroying much of the Forward Engineering section. While repairs are made, an inquiry into the accident occurs. The investigation team concludes that Asher violated regulations by working solo.

However, legal officer Lieutenant Junior Grade Paul Sinclair hears rumors from distraught sailors that they not only mourn the loss of a peer, but they have lost confidence in the leadership as it seems to the crew that a big cover-up happened. Everyone insists that Asher followed orders given by rising superstar Lieutenant Scott Silver the son of a very powerful Rear Admiral. Paul knows that the BURDEN OF PROOF is on him. However, all the JUST DETERMINATION in the galaxy could lead to the destruction of his own career and the end of his relationship with the woman he loves, the daughter of the head of the investigation team because if Paul succeeds it will embarrass the officer he wants as a father-in-law.

John G. Henry has pioneered a new sub-genre with his superb space ship military legal thrillers. As with the first tale (JUST DETERMINATION), BURDEN OF PROOF is more a tour of duty than an action packed tale as the plot focuses on relationships on an outer space vessel. The story line cleverly enables the audience to ride along with the crew and taste the pressure of the vastness of space inside relatively tight quarters, the seemingly endless stretches of time, and the protocol of rank. The legal aspects are brilliantly intertwined within a fantastic relationship military science fiction drama that should promote Mr. Hemry to a best selling admiral.

Harriet Klausner

Rating:
Summary: A Matter of Negligence
Review: Burden of Proof is the second novel in this series, following Just Determination. In the previous volume, the USS Michaelson destroyed a SASAL ship as ordered by Captain Peter Wakeman when he perceived that the other ship had powered up its weapons in preparation for a firing run, but onsite investigation determined that the other ship had no major weapons. The subsequent court-martial was ready to slam the captain, but Ensign Paul Sinclair, the ship's legal officer, testified that the ship's orders were vague, emphasizing the possibility of Q-ships, and thus set up the possibility of such a confrontation. The court found Wakeman guilty only of minor charges and sentenced him to receive a letter of reprimand, but otherwise exonerated him of all other wrong doing. Of course, he had already been relieved of command and would probably never receive another command, nor would he ever be promoted again, but he might retire without a major blot on his career.

In this novel, about a year later, Sinclair has just been promoted to Lieutenant Junior Grade. Captain Gonzalez, who received interim command after Wakeman, is being replaced by Captain Hayes. Lieutenant Carl Meadows, who is Command Duty Officer on the Sinclair's watch, has completed his third year aboard and is being replaced by Lieutenant Scott Silver. Lieutenant Colleen Kilgary is taking over Meadows' job as Weapons Officer and Silver will take her job as Main Propulsion Assistant. However, Silver will replace Meadows as Command Duty Officer on the second watch.

Silver soon impresses Sinclair as a charming individual, but also a slacker who lets everybody else do his work. Then an explosion and fire occur one Saturday just before the second watch. When Sinclair arrives on the bridge, it becomes obvious that Chief Asher, the Damage Control Officer, is not available, so he asks permission of the Officer of the Deck, Silver, to lead the damage control team in fighting the fire. Silver okays his request and the damage control party goes in and cools down the fuel, which contains its own oxidizer, enough to flicker out. The damage control party is then ordered out and replaced by a team from another ship.

The body of Chief Asher is found in the damaged compartment. Although the fire suppression equipment was nonfunctional and the engineering log was damaged, the investigating officer did not find enough evidence to determine the cause of the destruction. However, Petty Officer Sharpe, the ship's Master-at-Arms, requests permission to bring an expert onboard to examine the logs. When Chief Warrant Officer Rose arrives, Sinclair provides him with physical access to a terminal and Rose looks for, and finds, evidence of computer cracking which occurred a few hours after the fire. Sinclair reports this information to the Captain.

In this story, Sinclair once again sticks his neck out to serve justice as he sees it. Despite his lack of desire to become a lawyer, Sinclair is becoming very familiar with naval law and court-martials. He makes a few enemies on the way, but maintains the respect of those that mean the most to him.

As with the previous volume, this story reflects fairly recent events in the US Navy. Although not that similar in detail, the explosion and fire are suggestive of the explosion in the #2 turret of the USS Iowa in 1989. Of course, the Iowa disaster involved explosive propellants for the guns, but the fuel on the Michaelson is also a propellant, only with a slower burn rate so that it does not detonate. The Michaelson incident was potentially much more deadly than the Iowa disaster; spaceships are more vulnerable than sea-going battleships.

While I have not yet mentioned Sinclair's love life, it does have some relevance to the plot. Early in the story, Lieutenant JG Jen Shen orders Sinclair to dine with her father aboard his command, the USS Mahan, and a good time was had by all ... NOT. Captain Kay Shen is later assigned as the investigating officer for the incident on the Michaelson and bends over backwards to avoid any appearance of approving the actions of his daughter's boyfriend. However, his report assigns no blame for the incident.

The storyline also continues the daring adventures of Seaman Alvarez, who seems to get sick frequently and then screws up because of it. Somehow, the corpsmen never can find anything wrong, so she is often brought before the Captain's Mast as a troublemaker and malingerer. When Alvarez appears at Captain Hayes' first mast, he clearly expresses his displeasure in her activities and record.

Highly recommended for Hemry fans and for anyone else who enjoys tales of naval action and legal proceedings.

Rating:
Summary: A Matter of Negligence
Review: Burden of Proof is the second novel in this series, following Just Determination. In the previous volume, the USS Michaelson destroyed a SASAL ship as ordered by Captain Peter Wakeman when he perceived that the other ship had powered up its weapons in preparation for a firing run, but onsite investigation determined that the other ship had no major weapons. The subsequent court-martial was ready to slam the captain, but Ensign Paul Sinclair, the ship's legal officer, testified that the ship's orders were vague, emphasizing the possibility of Q-ships, and thus set up the possibility of such a confrontation. The court found Wakeman guilty only of minor charges and sentenced him to receive a letter of reprimand, but otherwise exonerated him of all other wrong doing. Of course, he had already been relieved of command and would probably never receive another command, nor would he ever be promoted again, but he might retire without a major blot on his career.

In this novel, about a year later, Sinclair has just been promoted to Lieutenant Junior Grade. Captain Gonzalez, who received interim command after Wakeman, is being replaced by Captain Hayes. Lieutenant Carl Meadows, who is Command Duty Officer on the Sinclair's watch, has completed his third year aboard and is being replaced by Lieutenant Scott Silver. Lieutenant Colleen Kilgary is taking over Meadows' job as Weapons Officer and Silver will take her job as Main Propulsion Assistant. However, Silver will replace Meadows as Command Duty Officer on the second watch.

Silver soon impresses Sinclair as a charming individual, but also a slacker who lets everybody else do his work. Then an explosion and fire occur one Saturday just before the second watch. When Sinclair arrives on the bridge, it becomes obvious that Chief Asher, the Damage Control Officer, is not available, so he asks permission of the Officer of the Deck, Silver, to lead the damage control team in fighting the fire. Silver okays his request and the damage control party goes in and cools down the fuel, which contains its own oxidizer, enough to flicker out. The damage control party is then ordered out and replaced by a team from another ship.

The body of Chief Asher is found in the damaged compartment. Although the fire suppression equipment was nonfunctional and the engineering log was damaged, the investigating officer did not find enough evidence to determine the cause of the destruction. However, Petty Officer Sharpe, the ship's Master-at-Arms, requests permission to bring an expert onboard to examine the logs. When Chief Warrant Officer Rose arrives, Sinclair provides him with physical access to a terminal and Rose looks for, and finds, evidence of computer cracking which occurred a few hours after the fire. Sinclair reports this information to the Captain.

In this story, Sinclair once again sticks his neck out to serve justice as he sees it. Despite his lack of desire to become a lawyer, Sinclair is becoming very familiar with naval law and court-martials. He makes a few enemies on the way, but maintains the respect of those that mean the most to him.

As with the previous volume, this story reflects fairly recent events in the US Navy. Although not that similar in detail, the explosion and fire are suggestive of the explosion in the #2 turret of the USS Iowa in 1989. Of course, the Iowa disaster involved explosive propellants for the guns, but the fuel on the Michaelson is also a propellant, only with a slower burn rate so that it does not detonate. The Michaelson incident was potentially much more deadly than the Iowa disaster; spaceships are more vulnerable than sea-going battleships.

While I have not yet mentioned Sinclair's love life, it does have some relevance to the plot. Early in the story, Lieutenant JG Jen Shen orders Sinclair to dine with her father aboard his command, the USS Mahan, and a good time was had by all ... NOT. Captain Kay Shen is later assigned as the investigating officer for the incident on the Michaelson and bends over backwards to avoid any appearance of approving the actions of his daughter's boyfriend. However, his report assigns no blame for the incident.

The storyline also continues the daring adventures of Seaman Alvarez, who seems to get sick frequently and then screws up because of it. Somehow, the corpsmen never can find anything wrong, so she is often brought before the Captain's Mast as a troublemaker and malingerer. When Alvarez appears at Captain Hayes' first mast, he clearly expresses his displeasure in her activities and record.

Highly recommended for Hemry fans and for anyone else who enjoys tales of naval action and legal proceedings.

Rating:
Summary: Shaping up to be a great series
Review: I devoured this book and its predecessor (_A Just Determination_) in one weekend. They're both excellent.

As I said in my review of the earlier book, John G. Hemry may not have personally invented the genre 'military-SF legal drama', but there can't be too many examples of it out there. And reading these two superbly crafted novels will show you why: if you pay attention to the details, you'll see a lot of expertise lurking unobtrusively in the background. There can't be all that many authors who can write with confidence about the US Navy, the physics of space travel and spaceships, _and_ military law -- let alone keep all that stuff in the background while competently _telling an interesting story_ that doesn't bog down into technical exposition.

I'm not going to tell you a great deal about that story itself, and as with the earlier book, I strongly advise you _not_ to read the cover blurb and other book information if you haven't done so already. In each case, Ace has seen fit to promote the book by giving away things that happen well over a hundred pages in, and I would have enjoyed each of them more if I hadn't known in advance what was going to happen.

I can safely tell you that as this one opens, Paul Sinclair has just made Lieutenant Junior Grade and is still serving aboard the USS _Michaelson_. Again, the first hundred or so pages follow him through his shipboard experiences as we watch him grow and mature as a naval officer.

I can also tell you that early on, there's an extremely well thought out (and, incidentally, extremely funny) sequence involving a protest by an organization called 'Greenspace', who apparently do much the same sorts of things in space as their present-day predecessors do at sea. Hemry's portrayal of the Space Navy's personal and professional responses to these 'hippies' is both hilarious (this is where the meat of the humor is) and accurate (as a measure of Sinclair's assimilation to Navy life); his portrayal of the Greenspacers themselves is a _little_ bit of a caricature, but no one will have any trouble recognizing their real-life counterparts. One of my complaints about Heinlein's mostly-excellent _Starship Troopers_ is that Heinlein sets up and shoots down way too many straw men; Hemry doesn't make that mistake.

(Any actual hippies who read this book should read the narrative and dialogue very carefully. Hemry isn't taking sides at the authorial level; if he's making a sociopolitical point here, it's the one Commander Sykes makes: by all means question assumptions and challenge beliefs -- every society needs people who will do that -- but don't, don't, don't do foolish things that put lives in danger. And if anybody out there is still under the illusion that people in military service are 'fascists', Hemry's books should help to disabuse them of such silliness.)

Otherwise I won't give anything away. This is some of the best recent SF I've read, and I'm looking forward to reading the next Paul Sinclair book (due out in March 2005, I think).

Rating:
Summary: Good read, a few stylistic quibbles.
Review: This is a good legal procedural novel. It isn't a whodunnit, more a howcatchhim book. Hemry does a fine job with the naval atmosphere and setting.

The two things keeping this from a 5 star review are:
the exposition is a bit clunky in places -- the exposition doesn't flow smoothly from the characters, it is there to make sure the reader is keeping up. This can be a persistent problem both in the SF genre and in legal stories.

the antagonist seems to lack any redeeming features. It is fairly clear who the antagonist will be within pages of his appearance in the story. It would have been nice to see some redeeming features to flesh him out as a 3D person. As it is, even the people who liked him are doubting their judgment by the end.

Rating:
Summary: Another tour de force of legalistic s-f from Hemry
Review: With Burden of Proof, the follow-up novel to A Just Determination, John G. Hemry cements his position as the best writer of legalistic military science fiction working today. Drawing on his own Naval career, Hemry brings the world of the United States Space Navy of 2100 to vivid life, populating it with some of the most human, realistic, vibrant characters I've ever been introduced to. Paul Sinclair, recently promoted from Ensign to Lieutenant Junior Grade, is a remarkable hero. Committed and hard-working, he cares only about doing his job to the best of his ability and he constantly chides himself for his own small mistakes. While he struggles to live up to the expectations of some of his senior officers, he is on the best of terms with most of his fellow junior officers and the ranks of enlisted men and women, actively seeking the advice of those around him and always acting in the most thoughtful, ethical of ways.

Things are going pretty well for Paul. His relationship with Jen Shen remains strong, even though she now serves on a different ship, and he has finally witnessed a return to normalcy after his critical involvement in the court-martial trial of his previous captain. Unfortunately for Paul, that two-week legal training course he took early in his career is about to come back and bite him once again.

I love the opening of this novel, as it features the disruption of a test firing mission by protestors. In a remarkable scene, Greenspacers fly in and launch themselves in to the target zone in individual pods, forcing Sinclair's ship, the Michaelson, to pick them up one by one and take them back to port. Soon thereafter, most unexpectedly, an explosion rocks the ship and takes out most of Forward Engineering. With the chief engineer missing in action and the fire suppression system not working, Sinclair takes it upon himself to lead the dangerous fire-fighting mission in to the affected area. It soon becomes clear that Chief Asher died in the explosion, and an investigation concludes that Asher caused the disaster by working on a critical piece of equipment alone - a clear violation of Navy policy. The man in charge of that investigation just so happens to be the father of Jen Shen, a man who has already made it clear that he finds Sinclair unworthy of his daughter's affection. The official report actually blames Paul - indirectly - for the tragedy, but the most galling thing of all is the awarding of a medal to Lieutenant Silver, the new replacement for Paul's best buddy on the ship. Anyone with eyes can see that Silver gets by on his personal charm alone while foisting all of his work on his subordinates (including Sinclair), and Silver was particularly useless at the time of the explosion.

Soon, information reaches Paul's ears that casts the official report's conclusions in doubt, and Sinclair is anxious to clear the name of Chief Asher and see that justice is done. The focus of attention quickly becomes Lieutenant Silver, putting Sinclair in a tough position. If he recommends court-martial proceedings against Silver based on his growing evidence, some will question whether he is trying to make Silver the scapegoat in order to deflect the doubts cast upon his own performance. There's another tiny little matter to consider, as well - Lieutenant Silver just happens to be the son of a powerful vice admiral. Once again, Sinclair is forced to make a tough choice that could threaten his reputation and Naval career - not to mention his relationship with Jen Shen, as her father will of course be called to testify for the defense.

The case against Silver is far from a slam-dunk because virtually all of the evidence is circumstantial. Clearly, though, that evidence points to Silver's wrongdoing. As in A Just Determination, the climax of the novel plays out in a military courtroom. It is here that Hemry's incredible skills at characterization really come to the fore, as this is by no means a boring courtroom drama.

Hemry has done the impossible and actually produced a novel more exciting, more engrossing, and more impressive than A Just Determination. I'm quickly coming to the conclusion that Hemry is the best science fiction writer working today. No other author manages to hook me mind, body, and soul from the very first page, and no other author creates characters who become such an integral part of my life. The first hundred pages are quite telling, as Hemry spends all of that initial time describing Sinclair's performance on the job and his interaction with friends and fellow officers. Only when the reader is firmly grounded in Sinclair's character and the nature of life aboard a Space Navy vessel does the central action of the novel, namely the explosion, take place. It's a picture perfect approach to making this legalistic science fiction thriller such an engrossing, addictive reading experience.