The Last Refuge

Iraq 1991, the dog days of Desert Storm, an American convoy is attacked in what later turns out to be a friendly fire incident, amongst the dead is a civilian engineer. Two years later San Diego journalist Peter Brandt is hired to write a story about the lawsuit filed against the government and his defense contractor employers by the engineer's widow.

The resulting investigation leads Brandt into the murky world of the sunshine states' defense industry and the heart of a plot involving ruthless corporate 'black' operations by the military and secrets some people are prepared to kill to see kept.

This old school, in the best possible way, thriller is the real deal. Martin Roy Hill keeps the action coming hard and fast in a story tha focuses on just how far off beam people can be driven to go when they convince themselves they are acting in the national interest. As the title suggests, patriotism can, sometimes, be the last refuge of some ruthless people.

He shows a brilliant sense of time and place, capturing perfectly a state and nation caught between the certainties of the just ended Cold War and the more morally ambiguous climate of the wars to come.

In Peter Brandt he has created a main character with just the right mix of two-fisted determination, world weary cynicism and vulnerability.

All round this is a first class performance from a writer at the very top of his game and a series that, on this showing, has the legs to run and run.