Author: W.E.B. Griffin and William E. Butterworth IV

Title: The Outlaws

Publisher: Putnam

W.E.B. Griffin  (born William Edmund Butterworth III) writes in a well established groove.

After using nine different pseudonyms and plowing the ground with 100 various titles, Griffin started writing a string of military novels called The Brotherhood of War Series that caught the attention of new readers. He used his own military background and service in the Korean War to fuse together heroic characters, historical details, and exciting, true to life action novels. He begins a series early in the main character's career and develops the books around their battles, heroic deeds, love interests, and taste for fine Scotch.

In the last three decades Griffin has written one of his popular series (between 5-10 books each) on the U.S. Army, the Marine Corps, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the Philadelphia Police Department, and a post cold-war OSS. His latest series, which in sales has been one of his most successful, is called The Presidential Agent Series, which focuses on a secret, contemporary, counterterrorism unit.

Carlos Guillermo Castillo, known by his family as Charley, has one of the most complicated and extensive backgrounds that a character has ever been given. His father was a US Army soldier, from a well-to-do family in Texas, who died heroically in battle. His posthumous awarding of the Medal of Honor provides his son with an automatic entrance into West Point. Charley's mother was from a rich, powerful and titled German family.

Since his parents never married Charley grew up as Karl Wilhelm von und zu Gossinger, until his mother died in a car wreck and he went to live with his paternal grandmother in Texas. In later years Castillo's unique heritage, language skills and military background comes to the attention of the President of the United States who uses him as his own personal security agent.

The Office of Organizational Analysis, which is the name of Castillo's secret agency, is disbanded after the president dies of a ruptured aorta at the end of Black Ops (book 5). The new president is furious to find out that he had been kept out of the loop with the secret agency and thinks Castillo actions in international affairs could be illegal.

He decides the best way to save face is to quietly disband the agency, retire the individuals, and make veiled threats to prosecute them if they didn't "drop off the face of the earth." Castillo and company have to decide what they will do with their time, energy and experience now that they are out of work and aren't welcome at home. When an old foe threatens the United States with a biological hazard, the team must decide how to best confront the enemy from the outside now that they are no longer working directly for the government but are actually seen as The Outlaws.

Though at times this book has promise, this latest offering in the series will disappoint most Griffin's fans. It takes much too long to set up the background for new readers and covers way too many pages of old material for the readers who have been with Castillo from book one. Griffin, and his son William E. Butterworth IV, who co-wrote The Outlaws, don't have the same knack for creating the intrigue outside of the establishment as they do from within. The president, who seems to only care about his own reputation, may have been right about Castillo.

His best days of black ops work is behind him and now it is time for him to quietly disappear—and it is time for Griffin to start a new series. This particular groove has become a rut.

*This Review First Published 3/4/2011