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Secret Justice
In the dead of night, a daring desertraid into Sudan by a Special Forces team ledby Lt. Kent "Rat" Rathman ends with theapprehension of the world's most wantedcriminal. But the methods necessary toachieve the goal are brutally unorthodox -- and a Middle Eastern prisoner suffersand dies as a result.
Wheels of power are turning rapidly in Washington as politicians use the complex international situation to disguise their real motives of crushing their political enemies while fighting the war on terrorism. As a military tribunal convenes to determine the fate of terrorist leader Wahamed Duar, another courtroom drama is about to unfold: the trial of Lt. Rathman for war crimes and murder. But Duar's capture may have come too late and at too high a cost, setting in motion a potentially devastating nightmare of destruction on American soil. The one man who could prevent it now stands accused by his own government . . . and faces a dark future in a military prison.
Wheels of power are turning rapidly in Washington as politicians use the complex international situation to disguise their real motives of crushing their political enemies while fighting the war on terrorism. As a military tribunal convenes to determine the fate of terrorist leader Wahamed Duar, another courtroom drama is about to unfold: the trial of Lt. Rathman for war crimes and murder. But Duar's capture may have come too late and at too high a cost, setting in motion a potentially devastating nightmare of destruction on American soil. The one man who could prevent it now stands accused by his own government . . . and faces a dark future in a military prison.
450 pages, Paperback
First published May 27, 2003
39 people are currently reading
180 people want to read
About the author
James W. Huston
11 books108 followersIn addition to being the author of Falcon Seven, Marine One, Secret Justice, Shadows of Power, Fallout, Flash Point, The Price of Power and Balance of Power, I am a partner in the international law firm of Morrison & Foerster, and head of the Trial Practice Group, and a former Navy Flight Officer in F-14s.
I grew up in West Lafayette, Indiana, and attended the University of South Carolina on a Navy ROTC scholarship, majoring in history, with a minor in English. During my senior summer, I did an exchange cruise with the French Navy on a destroyer, the EE Kersaint out of Brest (which was a wonderful experience and reinforced my decision to go into the Navy), and then attended the University of Warwick in England, to study English Reformation history and English literature.
After college, I received my Navy wings as a Naval Flight Officer and after F-14 training in San Diego, was assigned to VF-84, the Jolly Rogers, on the USS Nimitz. While in VF-84, I participated in making the movie, The Final Countdown, starring Kirk Douglas, Katherine Ross, and Martin Sheen. The filming for the movie was done in several places, but most of the flying was done out of Naval Air Station Key West, Florida. The entire movie crew was in Key West, and we would review the dailies (yesterday's filming) every night. I was asked to help direct a couple of scenes—the blowing up of the yacht by the Zeros, and the F-14 low-level flyby over Katherine Ross—as well as filming several other scenes with a Panavision camera in the back seat of the F-14. The DVD version of The Final Countdown was recently released. The producers pulled together the Jolly Rogers guys who did the flying, to create and "behind-the-scenes" bonus cut.
I did two Mediterranean cruises while in the Jolly Rogers, and other shorter cruises to the Caribbean and the North Atlantic. I was selected to attend TOPGUN and graduated before my second cruise.
After six years in the Navy, I left active duty in 1981 to attend the University of Virginia School of Law. After graduation, I joined the San Diego-based law firm, Gray Cary Ames & Frye, and began flying in the Navy Reserves. After a few years in the Reserves, I transferred from flying to Naval Intelligence. Naval intelligence was quite interesting and allowed me access to top secret information about world affairs and military developments. I was on active duty at JICPAC, the Joint Intelligence Center, Pacific Fleet, in Pearl Harbor, when Iraq invaded Kuwait, leading to Desert Storm. I got to see a lot about what happened behind the scenes in an event like that, and how much of importance never makes it to the press.
My writing career started in the form of op-eds for the Escondido Times Advocate and the San Diego Union-Tribune, covering current affairs topics. After numerous editorials, I decided to try fiction. Neither my first novel nor my second were accepted for publication. I went through several hundred rejection letters, and labored almost every night for five years before I had any hope of getting published. I've gone back and looked at those books since, and I could make them publishable now, but they weren't very good back then.
My third novel was different. It combined many areas of my personal experience into one story—military action, political intrigue, and Constitutional Law. I found a clause in the U.S. Constitution that hadn't been used since 1812, and asked the simple question: "What if it was used today? What would happen?"
The first published novel, Balance of Power (William Morrow, 1998), was optioned by Jerry Bruckheimer and Disney. The novel was adapted into a screenplay by Mark Baumbach, but was never made into a film.
Five more novels followed in the next five years—The Price of Power (William Morrow, 1999), Flash Point (William Morrow, 2000), Fallout (William Morrow, 2001), The Shadows of Power (William Morrow, 2002), and Secret Justice (William Morrow, 2003).
I grew up in West Lafayette, Indiana, and attended the University of South Carolina on a Navy ROTC scholarship, majoring in history, with a minor in English. During my senior summer, I did an exchange cruise with the French Navy on a destroyer, the EE Kersaint out of Brest (which was a wonderful experience and reinforced my decision to go into the Navy), and then attended the University of Warwick in England, to study English Reformation history and English literature.
After college, I received my Navy wings as a Naval Flight Officer and after F-14 training in San Diego, was assigned to VF-84, the Jolly Rogers, on the USS Nimitz. While in VF-84, I participated in making the movie, The Final Countdown, starring Kirk Douglas, Katherine Ross, and Martin Sheen. The filming for the movie was done in several places, but most of the flying was done out of Naval Air Station Key West, Florida. The entire movie crew was in Key West, and we would review the dailies (yesterday's filming) every night. I was asked to help direct a couple of scenes—the blowing up of the yacht by the Zeros, and the F-14 low-level flyby over Katherine Ross—as well as filming several other scenes with a Panavision camera in the back seat of the F-14. The DVD version of The Final Countdown was recently released. The producers pulled together the Jolly Rogers guys who did the flying, to create and "behind-the-scenes" bonus cut.
I did two Mediterranean cruises while in the Jolly Rogers, and other shorter cruises to the Caribbean and the North Atlantic. I was selected to attend TOPGUN and graduated before my second cruise.
After six years in the Navy, I left active duty in 1981 to attend the University of Virginia School of Law. After graduation, I joined the San Diego-based law firm, Gray Cary Ames & Frye, and began flying in the Navy Reserves. After a few years in the Reserves, I transferred from flying to Naval Intelligence. Naval intelligence was quite interesting and allowed me access to top secret information about world affairs and military developments. I was on active duty at JICPAC, the Joint Intelligence Center, Pacific Fleet, in Pearl Harbor, when Iraq invaded Kuwait, leading to Desert Storm. I got to see a lot about what happened behind the scenes in an event like that, and how much of importance never makes it to the press.
My writing career started in the form of op-eds for the Escondido Times Advocate and the San Diego Union-Tribune, covering current affairs topics. After numerous editorials, I decided to try fiction. Neither my first novel nor my second were accepted for publication. I went through several hundred rejection letters, and labored almost every night for five years before I had any hope of getting published. I've gone back and looked at those books since, and I could make them publishable now, but they weren't very good back then.
My third novel was different. It combined many areas of my personal experience into one story—military action, political intrigue, and Constitutional Law. I found a clause in the U.S. Constitution that hadn't been used since 1812, and asked the simple question: "What if it was used today? What would happen?"
The first published novel, Balance of Power (William Morrow, 1998), was optioned by Jerry Bruckheimer and Disney. The novel was adapted into a screenplay by Mark Baumbach, but was never made into a film.
Five more novels followed in the next five years—The Price of Power (William Morrow, 1999), Flash Point (William Morrow, 2000), Fallout (William Morrow, 2001), The Shadows of Power (William Morrow, 2002), and Secret Justice (William Morrow, 2003).
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 31 reviews
July 3, 2024
An exciting fictional riff on the theme of Osama bin Laden’s death!
Lt Kent “Rat” Rathman, the most decorated and highly acclaimed Special Forces operative in the US military, achieved a near impossible feat – the capture of Wahamed Duar, the world’s most wanted, most feared and most hated radical Islamic terrorist. But, for many people, the end does not justify the means and Rat soon finds himself on trial for war crimes and the use of torture. SECRET JUSTICE is an exciting, high speed military, espionage, political and legal thriller that tells a realistic story of the simultaneous trials of Duar and Rathman. It’s not a great leap to believe that the military operations to relieve the world of the onerous presence of Osama bin Laden might have unwound in exactly the way that Huston imagines in SECRET JUSTICE.
Despite an ending that let the rest of the novel down ever so slightly, SECRET JUSTICE was a gripping page turner and I definitely count myself as a James Huston fan. I’ll be on the lookout for more of his work.
Paul Weiss
Lt Kent “Rat” Rathman, the most decorated and highly acclaimed Special Forces operative in the US military, achieved a near impossible feat – the capture of Wahamed Duar, the world’s most wanted, most feared and most hated radical Islamic terrorist. But, for many people, the end does not justify the means and Rat soon finds himself on trial for war crimes and the use of torture. SECRET JUSTICE is an exciting, high speed military, espionage, political and legal thriller that tells a realistic story of the simultaneous trials of Duar and Rathman. It’s not a great leap to believe that the military operations to relieve the world of the onerous presence of Osama bin Laden might have unwound in exactly the way that Huston imagines in SECRET JUSTICE.
Despite an ending that let the rest of the novel down ever so slightly, SECRET JUSTICE was a gripping page turner and I definitely count myself as a James Huston fan. I’ll be on the lookout for more of his work.
Paul Weiss
April 25, 2018
This is a book about the morality of torturing terrorists. That’s a promising premise, but the author ultimately crashes in a spiral of nonsense.
It is random, but I am reading this after the 50th anniversary of MLK’s assassination, which has prompted me to read more about him. What’s striking in that context is the moral cowardice of the supposedly super-heroic protagonist. MLK accepted jail-time for breaking unjust laws as a way to protest injustice, despite the real daily danger he was in.
The torturing the protagonist is on trial for is privately justified with the ticking time bomb cliché, but the intelligence he extracts turns out to be embarrassingly false, undermining the entire justification of necessity. Moreover, publicly he doesn’t state that he tortures and he’s proud of it and is willing to go to jail for it as a sacrifice for his country and his beliefs. Instead he tries to weasel out of admitting that he even killed a prisoner by water-boarding. His defense is the perjury that he politely gave the man a cup of water. And he’s got a whole spy plan for skipping bail and abandoning his country. So we never get an actual debate on the morality of torture because no one who likes torture has the spine to state that on the record.
In the last action scene, torture somehow miraculously works on the ultra-evil boss terrorist even though he is minutes away from completing a spectacular suicide mission. This is totally stupid. The super-covert CIA protagonist becomes famous, and gets acquitted and the crowd goes wild and he gets the girl.
This is all a big mess.
It is random, but I am reading this after the 50th anniversary of MLK’s assassination, which has prompted me to read more about him. What’s striking in that context is the moral cowardice of the supposedly super-heroic protagonist. MLK accepted jail-time for breaking unjust laws as a way to protest injustice, despite the real daily danger he was in.
The torturing the protagonist is on trial for is privately justified with the ticking time bomb cliché, but the intelligence he extracts turns out to be embarrassingly false, undermining the entire justification of necessity. Moreover, publicly he doesn’t state that he tortures and he’s proud of it and is willing to go to jail for it as a sacrifice for his country and his beliefs. Instead he tries to weasel out of admitting that he even killed a prisoner by water-boarding. His defense is the perjury that he politely gave the man a cup of water. And he’s got a whole spy plan for skipping bail and abandoning his country. So we never get an actual debate on the morality of torture because no one who likes torture has the spine to state that on the record.
In the last action scene, torture somehow miraculously works on the ultra-evil boss terrorist even though he is minutes away from completing a spectacular suicide mission. This is totally stupid. The super-covert CIA protagonist becomes famous, and gets acquitted and the crowd goes wild and he gets the girl.
This is all a big mess.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 5, 2015
An exciting military suspense novel that makes you question why the government is trying to railroad a special forces operative who is attempting to free the world of a know terrorist and his cell. Great story with the grand finale I love. 8 out of 10 for me.
February 6, 2013
Outstanding military suspense thriller. This novel draws you in through it’s exciting conclusion. 10 of 10 stars
February 27, 2022
This is the best book I've read this year. It's both a hard-hitting special forces book and a legal drama. It's Vince Flynn meets John Grisham.
The special forces part is intelligent and realistic. Rat is, of course, bigger than life, but the action is realistic, and Rat is a believable character. The courtroom drama -- dramas -- is as well-done as any Grisham novel.
The author deftly raises a significant issue in the war on terror without preaching or coming down on either side, allowing the reader to make up their own mind. Well done.
The special forces part is intelligent and realistic. Rat is, of course, bigger than life, but the action is realistic, and Rat is a believable character. The courtroom drama -- dramas -- is as well-done as any Grisham novel.
The author deftly raises a significant issue in the war on terror without preaching or coming down on either side, allowing the reader to make up their own mind. Well done.
December 17, 2024
An exciting military suspense novel. This is a story set in the middle of the War on Terrorism. It includes courtroom drama, fearless flying, down and dirty counter-terrorism. However, suspend belief that our hero could be on trial at the same time he conducts anti/counter terrorism ops. Both a hard-hitting special forces book and a legal drama.
December 28, 2018
Where do you draw the line
An action packed seal team adventure with a crazy trial mixed in. Danger with every turn from terrorists getting radioactive material and no idea where found or going to be used until the last minute.
An action packed seal team adventure with a crazy trial mixed in. Danger with every turn from terrorists getting radioactive material and no idea where found or going to be used until the last minute.
September 19, 2024
I liked the characters in this book. The writing was done well. I had a hard time putting this down especially during the action sequences, which had a lot. I think this book would make a good action movie. I will definitely check out other books by James W. Huston.
December 13, 2017
Great read.
This is a great read. Good plot. Fast moving. Found it on Bookbub.com. Now to read Huston's other books. Thanks.
This is a great read. Good plot. Fast moving. Found it on Bookbub.com. Now to read Huston's other books. Thanks.
November 16, 2018
Great from start to finish!
May 4, 2019
Excellent!
Read
August 16, 2022NOOK
February 25, 2017
Okay. Some action. At times moved a little slower than what you might expect
October 29, 2008
I wasn't looking for much from a Clancyish, Flynn-like novel about government conspiracies and the alleged torture of terrorists, and was thus amazed with the quality of this story. Readers are introduced to the waterboard within the first tenth of the book and riveted throughout. Five easy stars.
March 27, 2013
#2 in the "Rat" Rathman series. Not much of a series, Rathman appears in two of author Huston's military thrillers.
"Rat" Rathman series - When Lieutenant Ratham is investigated for the death of a member of Wahamad Duar's terrorist organization during interrogation, he finds he must defend himself before he can protect his country from a massive attack planned by Duar's organization
"Rat" Rathman series - When Lieutenant Ratham is investigated for the death of a member of Wahamad Duar's terrorist organization during interrogation, he finds he must defend himself before he can protect his country from a massive attack planned by Duar's organization
January 3, 2014
difficult trial, annoy aggravate a shit stick, start queue on, who is behind this, work on from unexpected angles, nuclear bombs and fear of crazy acts, Paul none of is good, support Hitler’s justice as amnesty doctors Ollie, predisposed to find guilty for punishment and individual’s sense of justice vs justice of individual.
August 27, 2011
Secret Justice is just okay at best. I was in the mood for light, fast-paced adventure. Instead I got implied philosophy in a slow-paced adventure. Oh well...it is not great, but nor is it hideous.
February 18, 2016
This book had all the required components - courtroom drama, terrorists, special ops, so it should have been a non stop thrill ride however it never took off. It was interesting but I found it hard to get into and kind of boring.
July 29, 2007
One of the partners in my law firm wrote a series of books about this character. This one is about the ethics and effectiveness of torture. It's an action beach read.
October 31, 2007
I really couldn't put this book down. Read it late into the night, yes I did. I'm not even interested in the military, but this one was great.
November 16, 2008
Good book, but predictable. This is conspiracy 101 and did not build up the politica intrique enough. I did enjoy the book because it is full of action and anti-terrorism sentiments.
August 24, 2010
Read on the plane - would not recommend
August 18, 2012
Nancy 5 stars; Ron 5 stars
August 24, 2012
Good yarn with lots of navy and legal jargon -- understandable for a past F-14 TopGun pilot and lawyer author. I'll read more from this author.
February 15, 2013
excellent!!
December 7, 2013
Tackles the issue of torture as a tool to extract information, particularly terrorists when time is of the essence.
Want to read
July 25, 2013I registered a book at BookCrossing.com!
http://www.BookCrossing.com/journal/12077755
http://www.BookCrossing.com/journal/12077755
April 14, 2014
Never read this authors work but I really liked this novel, will read more from him
March 16, 2021
Good read. Huston creates an interesting story line.
July 30, 2013
I really enjoyed reading this book and getting back to Rat.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 31 reviews