From coast to coast, raves greeted James W. Huston's first electrifying thriller of Washington intrigue, Congressional confrontation, and fast-paced, flat-out war at sea. Now he's back with a new novel featuring the same winning style and many of the same characters, who face off once again in a deadly, winner-take-all encounter. In a plot torn from tomorrow's headlines, the peacenik president court-martials the admiral who, in defiance of a presidential order, led Congress's attack on the same group of terrorists who set off the plot of Huston's last explosive novel, Balance of Power. The angry Speaker of the House retaliates by initiating impeachment proceedings. Jim Dillon, the Speaker's top aide, finds himself defending the admiral in the court-martial and is named number-two prosecutor for the upcoming impeachment trial. Meanwhile, the terrorists are back in action: invading a U.S.-owned gold mine on an Indonesian island, murdering the American boss, and holding his wife hostage. The price for her life: release of the terrorists captured in the assault. With The Price of Power, James W. Huston delivers another heart-stopping page-turner filled with military action and political intrigue. In this sequel to the successful Balance of Power, an admiral who has defied orders by invading a small Indonesian island is court-martialed by an angry presidentAwho in turn is targeted for (of all things) impeachment. Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. The sequel to Balance of Power reads like a collaboration between Tom Clancy and John Grisham, which is hardly surprising, since Huston is a former naval aviator and a present-day lawyer. The book interweaves three plots: the court-martial of Admiral Ray Billings for disobeying the president's orders to ignore a congressional Letter of Marque and Reprisal, the attempted impeachment of President Manchester on the grounds of being unfit for office because of his pacifist Mennonite beliefs, and the deployment of SEALs to deal with further terrorist acts by the Indonesian who calls himself George Washington. The legal intrigues are much the strongest elements of the book, and Jim Dillon and Molly Vaughan, the champions of Admiral Billings, are much the most interesting characters in it. The overall effect, however, will surely keep Balance of Power readers turning pages and finishing the story with considerable satisfaction. Huston continues to be a most welcome newcomer to the ranks of thriller-scribblers. Roland Green A dated, tediously plotted revision, posing as a sequel to Huston's stirring, high-tech Washington legal procedural, Balance of Power (1998). That annoying Indonesian pirate who calls himself George Washington is at it again. This time, he's kidnapped the president and wife of an American company operating a jungle gold mine. Washington kills the husband and threatens to torture the wife if the US doesn't return his 28 compatriots, captured in a daring raid by Admiral Ray Billings at the end of Balance of Power. Billings used an obscure Constitutional provision discovered by legal wizard Jim Dillon as justification to disregard an order from waffling, pacifistic US President Manchester to let the Indonesian government handle the problem. Now, a vengeful Manchester has ordered Billings court-martialed. Disgusted that his boss, House Speaker Stanbridge (a Newt Gingrich stand-in), won't help raise money for the admiral's defense, Dillon quits his job and offers to defend Billings pro bono. White House Counsel Molly Vaughn, Dillon's on-again, off-again fiance, is similarly disgusted with the President's paranoid chief of staff, Arlan Van den Bosch. She quits and joins Dillon in time to take a bullet (not fatal) meant for the admiral. As Dillon improvises his defense, Stanbridge rams a quickie impeachment hearing through Congress, accusing the President of not protecting American lives on foreign soil. Dillon and Vaughn discover a military technicality that exonerates the admiral and yet another Constitutional provision that gives Congress the power to send in the Navy SEALsbut not before Dillon gets his old job back and becomes point man at the President's impeachment trial, where he ultimately forces Manchester to let the SEALs do their thing. Right-wing cant and a vastly hypothetical scenario reduce this overlong cautionary tale to little more than a hardware-heavy Tom Clancy clone. (Author tour) -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. A graduate of TOPGUN, James W. Huston flew F-14s off the USS Nimitz with the Jolly Rogers. He served as a naval flight officer and worked in Naval Intelligence before becoming a lawyer and the acclaimed author of The Shadows of Power, Balance of Power, The Price of Power, Flash Point, and Fallout. He lives in San Diego, California.