Monday, June 4, 2018

BOOK REVIEW "The President is Missing" By Bill Clinton and James Patterson

This con man again.




From The New York Times:
The American presidency comes with “thrilling highs” and “lows lower than a snake’s belly.” That’s what the fictitious President Jonathan Lincoln Duncan thinks to himself early in “The President Is Missing,” a thriller and escapist fairy tale co-written by Bill Clinton and James Patterson.
David Ellis is credited right up front as the person who “stuck with us through the research, our first and second outlines, and the many, many drafts,” so we know what he did: a lot. Otherwise, the former president appears to have provided inside information about how the job works when a president is paying attention (this novel’s POTUS reads his presidential daily briefing), done some speechifying and drawn upon his great love of thrillers. Patterson does what he does best: deliver cliffhanger endings to short chapters and make the story move.
Both of them seem determined to keep the shrill, bitter tone of real politics out of this fantasy. Sure, the words “impeachment” and “witch hunt” make cameo appearances. And Duncan’s vice president is a woman who thinks she deserved the nomination. Readers may wonder why the authors decide early on to kill off the first lady, who was a brilliant law student when she first dazzled Duncan, and why some of her last words were: “Promise me you’ll meet someone else, Jonathan. Promise me.” 


-RW  

2 comments:

  1. Probably the only writing that Willy did was when he endorsed his advance checks.

    ReplyDelete