The Price of Victory

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. (May)