Peters' series of Civil War mysteries (written under the name "Owen Parry") are unique and fascinating, combining vivid historical detail with fully drawn, idiosyncratic characters in complex and tense situations. By contrast, Traitor is set in late '90s Washington, D.C., where a Pentagon-based colonel discovers a massively corrupt and bloody defense contracting scandal. Peters' protagonist is not your average square-jawed hero: he has mixed feelings about the second-tier rock musician he's dating, and his quiet, understated manner has left him unappreciated by the higher brass and short of close friends. By the end of the third chapter, his girlfriend has been made a target and he himself is temporarily held by strangely emotional French (!) torturers after mysterious computer disks. He's got just a few short days to find out what he's mixed up in, deliver the disks, and save a loved one's life while constantly battling the Frenchmen, corrupt military brass, and incompetent D.C. cops. The violence is extreme and the plot dizzying.

The book is an homage to the noir paperbacks Peters read as a teenager and young man: the evil is pure, the conspiracy is elaborate but believable, and Raymond Chandler's model hero describes Peters' quite well (" Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean... He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man"). The book does not quite match the high standards of a Chandler novel—the hero is so confused and afraid that living in his shoes as a reader can be a bit miserable, and he has too few triumphs along the way to ease the misery. Nevertheless, it is a page-turner that kept me up several hours later than I otherwise would have remained awake. I would recommend it to those who don't object to their escapism being disturbingly realistic, gritty, and at times gory. ( )