Edge of Honor

Despite a myriad of subplots and characters, Herman's latest intricately woven, grandly schemed techno-melodrama (after Against All Enemies) delivers solid entertainment with nary a hitch. Set in 2002, it continues the travails of Madeline (Maddy) Turner, introduced in Power Curve. Having succeeded her husband after his assassination, Maddy, a highly capable though emotionally vulnerable mother of two, has become the first woman president of the U.S. Trouble is brewing in Russia as Mikhail Vashin, a wealthy megalomaniac Mafiya powerbroker, plots to use Germany as his unwitting ally in a scheme to make Poland the center for international traffic in drugs, sex, money laundering and contraband military technology. When it becomes obvious there is skullduggery afoot, savvy President Turner sends ranking Air Force General Robert Bender to Poland as ambassador. On the domestic front, during a visit to New Mexico where her 14-year-old son is in military school, Maddy becomes infatuated with General Matt Pontowski, the dashing pilot who is the father of her son's roommate. Because she plans to mount her own campaign to become her party's first official female presidential candidate, however, Maddy accepts the reality that she must put her feminine yearning aside. After Matt is sent to train Polish pilots, Ambassador Bender is assassinated and Maddy's old political nemesis, Senator Leland, blackmails her into appointing Matt's avowed enemy to fill the vacancy. Orchestrated against the counter-perils of innocent teenagers who become the targets of the Russian mob, tension builds inside the guarded meeting rooms of the White House. Herman deftly negotiates murderous chicanery, political hanky-panky, gripping air combat and steamy sex in a sweeping political epic of post-Cold War power struggles. (July)