The Price of Victory: A Novel - Hardcover

Green, Vincent S.

4

26 ratings by Goodreads

9780802712004: The Price of Victory: A Novel

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0802712002 ISBN 13: 9780802712004

Publisher: Walker & Co, 1992

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Assigned to defend Sgt. First Class Billy T. Frazier, a war hero accused of being the Army's largest drug dealer, Jack Hayes struggles against his own working-class prejudice against the rich to fight an unscrupulous prosecutor.

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From Publishers Weekly:

With the intensity of The Caine Mutiny , this dramatic first novel by a former Army lawyer depicts the court- martial of a career soldier brought up on charges of drug dealing. Billy Frazier, a Special Forces hero who has taken an administrative posting in Germany in an attempt to save his marriage, is accused of smuggling and selling hashish, offenses punishable by up to 40 years in Leavenworth prison. Frazier, who maintains he is being framed, asks Jack Hayes to defend him. Hayes, long pestered by his wife to join her father's corporate law firm, has remained a military lawyer because he hates the idea of "defending big insurance companies." Hayes survives a visit with Frazier's alleged source, who lives in a section of Amsterdam where even the police are reluctant to venture, but still must come up with a defense that will impress the hard-line judge, known as the Whopper for the size of his sentences. Although Frazier's main accuser is jailed on charges of robbing an Army payroll vault, the judge disallows a vital piece of evidence for the defense; then the prosecution turns over a high card that Hayes can't beat except by stretching the limits of his and his profession's ethical code. Unlike Wouk's military courtroom classic, this taut debut closes with a shattering surprise.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews:

In this crackerjack first novel of military justice--in and out of the courtroom--Capt. Jack Hayes, assigned to defend Sgt. Billy Frazier on charges of massive drug selling, probes patiently for the weak links in the prosecution's case: the alleged Amsterdam connection denies knowing Frazier; one of the Army's two witnesses against Frazier, an admitted dealer who's testifying for a reduced sentence, gets blown up before he can take the stand; and the surviving witness, Lt. Robert McCormick, is a pumped-up soldier of fortune, a stone killer already doing 99 years for simulating a terrorist attack (with real bombs and bullets) in order to prep his men for war with Russia. Jack realizes his case won't be won on the evidence, though, but on the whims of the skeptical jury and the rulings and interpretations of Judge DiMarco (dubbed ``the Whopper'' for his gigantic sentences); and he doesn't foresee a rebuttal witness who can trash his defense in ten minutes, a witness who'll force him to a strategy that could land him in jail along with his client. Just about perfect in its control of the ebb and flow of each scene, and of Jack's conduct of the case as a whole: must reading for fans of courtroom drama. -- Copyright �1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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