Balance of Power: A Novel

New York: William Morrow & Company, 1998. First Edition. Hardcover. Fine/Fine. A highly collectible first edition, tight clean copy, protected in a new br odart wrapper, no inscriptions, unclipped dustjacket, this is not an Ex-Lib or a BCE/BOMC edition. John Stanbridge, the Speaker of the House in James W. Huston's exciting and exceptionally timely first thriller, isn't exactly Newt Gingrich ("He was of average height with dark brown hair that was stiff and unruly. He wore it parted on the side, but the only time his hair looked neat was in the morning when it was still wet") but he is a hawkish, confrontational Republican who can't stand the idea that President Edward Manchester--a Democrat and a pacifist--is Commander in Chief of America's armed forces. So when Indonesian terrorists hijack a new American supercargo vessel and torture the captain and crew on live TV, Stanbridge is delighted to discover a clause in the Constitution that lets Congress go behind the president's unwilling back and authorize military action on its own. This leads to a Constitutional crisis, which lawyer Huston describes crisply, as well as some air and sea military action, on which former jet pilot Huston also brings a lot of personal expertise to bear.