Blindside: A Novel

Blindside, written by a former Navy legal officer, is the story of Commander Neal Olen, 44, an intelligence officer who faces charges of adultery and possibly leaking secrets. It is an insider's look at the archaic and potentially crushing machinery of military justice. Olen's troubles begin in 1999 when he is recognized as the officer on whom a fictional character is based in a salacious, tell-all novel. Its author is a woman with whom he had a weekend affair five years earlier while separated from his wife. Information about the nation's reconnaissance satellites somehow found its way into her novel. Olen finds himself a pawn of the author, hoping to hype her book and the Navy, eager to make an example of him in its push for "zero tolerance" of sex scandals and for airtight security on intelligence information. He grapples with the ethical dilemma: When caught in an unjust system, is honesty still a virture?