Dave Gray - First Book Annotation - Marine One

Title: Marine One
Author: James W. Huston
Publisher: St. Martin’s, May 2009, $24.99
Pages: 336
ISBN: 9780312364311
Genre: Legal Thriller

The President leaves the White House in Marine One during a terrible thunderstorm. He must fly to Camp David for a top secret meeting. Marine One crashes in a ravine in Maryland, killing everyone aboard.

Politicians immediately blame WorldCopter, the French manufacturer of Marine One. The shocked Country hears the politician’s accusations on every media outlet and convicts WorldCopter of murdering the President in the court of public opinion before any investigations have begun. Afraid of criminal charges, WorldCopter hires attorney Mike Nolen to defend the WorldCopter and its executives. Even though Mike is a small time lawyer in Annapolis, he was a helicopter pilot in the Marines and has experience flying the same model helicopter as Marine One.

Mike is quickly swept up in the circus atmosphere and investigations from multiple Government agencies. He builds his own team of experts to investigate the crash and finds the possibility that other parties may be at fault. Along the way the first lady and widows of the helicopter crew hire a high powered, very aggressive attorney to file a wrongful death lawsuit. All signs point to faulty equipment on Marine One and no one knows why the President would fly the short distance to Camp David instead of drive. Also, no one knows who the President was meeting at Camp David.

Marine One is a fast paced legal suspense that starts from the first sentence “If my radio alarm would have gone off, I would have known the president was dead.” The book does not get too technical and the pace doesn’t slow until the end. This book has plenty of political conspiracy and legal drama. What it doesn’t have is character development. From beginning to end there are many characters but you learn very little about any of them. You always feel an air of danger but there is very little violence and no gory details when it happens.

I really enjoyed this book. I liked the combination of military, political, and legal action. The lack of character development did not bother me. It was fast paced, believable, had the twists and turns and a satisfying surprise ending. I’ve heard some complaints about the how realistic the aviation facts are but I don’t have enough knowledge of the aviation to know the difference. However, areas of the book referring to computer technology information lacked detail but were correct and believable when applied.

Overall, this is a fast paced book that keeps you guessing until the end. I would recommend it to anyone that enjoys legal and political thrillers.