The case against Colonel Sutton

[Jacket copy, first edition (1961)]

The story of a handsome career officer trapped in a secret military investigation of his personal life, THE CASE AGAINST COLONEL SUTTON is an intense, absorbing narrative of one man's personal ordeal. The novel opens with the abrupt interception at Paris' Orly Field of Lieutenant Colonel David Sutton and his fiancée, Virginia, daughter of a Pentagon general. Virginia is spirited away by friends whom the General has persuaded to break up the elopement, and Sutton is taken to the military attaché annex of the American Embassy, where, to his surprise and horror, he is informed that for the past two weeks he has been the subject of an off-the-record G-2 (Army Intelligence) deviate investigation.

Although Sutton knew nothing of the case, the Department of the Army suspects that he has eloped with a general's daughter as a mock heterosexual gesture – and to coerce the Army into dropping the charges. Its investigation forced into the open, the Pentagon rushes its top civilian investigator, Special Agent Larry Adams, to Paris. Adams is ruthless, cool, capable, the Army's shrewdest "queer chaser," but in Colonel Sutton he confronts a formidable opponent – a man just as brutally direct, vital, aggressive, hostile, and self-assured as Adams himself. Despite these masculine characteristics, Adams never doubts that Sutton is homosexual. Still, Adams realizes that he can't simply wave a court-martial and get him to resign. Sutton has a good record and he is shrewd enough to know that the Army does not want a court-martial or any action that would bring the allegations into the open, revealing that a trusted career officer was a homosexual and had access to top-secret national and international data.

Adams sees that the challenge confronting him is to get behind Sutton's brash, confident shield and destroy him at his most vulnerable point. Day by agonizing day these determined antagonists clash in a furious battle of wills – Adams presenting ever more filthy accusations and Sutton countering with a forceful defense.

An unwilling but fascinated witness to this contest is Eileen Allison, the attractive Embassy secretary who is assigned to record the investigation. Unable to believe that David Sutton is guilty, increasingly and instinctively drawn to his maleness as well as to his courage and sensibilities, she finds herself falling in love with Sutton and caught in a triangle of divided loyalties.

THE CASE AGAINST COLONEL SUTTON is at once a compelling, dramatic narrative and a fascinating study of one of the most devastating forms of character assassination in our time – guilt by association. It not only throws a startling light on the unethical and abusive tactics employed by ruthless men in positions of authority, but also exposes a tragic national characteristic – the conformist distrust of the creative individual who marches to the sound of a distant drum.