Pop Mackinnon—"a coarse, charming man, a lawyer, and a good one"—wants his sons to follow his path: to be lawyers who know how to hunt and marry well; to be gentlemen who join that unassailable aristocracy which is earned by tough, nononsense cleverness and is protected by money. Son John disappoints Pop; he is killed in World War II. So son Chip—a fighter pilot who was shot down in the war but survived as a P.O.W.—becomes the title character of "The Good Son," Craig Nova's fourth novel. In this dark, deep story of a father and son who love (and love to fight) each other, the good son is the one who will defeat, or even kill, his father with the father's own weapons.

I've read no better, no more bitter and ironic understanding of professional cunning and ambition since Joseph Heller's...