Many U.S. presidents have been readers of pulp. John F. Kennedy was a fan of James Bond novels, while Ronald Reagan grew up on a diet of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ paperbacks (creator of Tarzan). But William Jefferson Clinton, elected in 1993 for the position of the most powerful man in the world, stands out as the one president with the most refined taste in crime fiction.
The White House used to release his holiday reading list every year, which often featured thrillers. And just as JFK’s reading habits helped British writer Ian Fleming hit the big-time in the States, Clinton’s fondness for Walter Mosley’s detective series kick-started one of the finest bestseller careers in history.
But pulpy love is quite different from penning the junk. Of course, Clinton’s been aided by James Patterson, author of millions of thrillers. Incidentally, Patterson rarely writes his own novels, running a factory of ghostwriters who churn them out. Okay, so with all that in mind I plunged into the adventure.
High stakes?
The prose is not challenging, and the plot isn’t complex. President Jon Duncan is having a rough weekend, as a committee of senators is about to impeach him. He also suffers from some vague but lethal blood disease which might or might not be HIV. It makes him swoon occasionally.
At this trying time, a mysterious foreign woman and her partner turn up in DC with extremely sensitive information and will only speak directly (and secretly) to the president. Unfortunately, the reader remains in the dark about what this information is (so we don’t understand why the president gets so involved) until some hundreds of pages into the book, by which time our curiosity has
worn off. It ultimately turns out to be fairly mundane knowledge about an impending cyber-attack and so, finally, on page 231 the president thinks to himself, “The Wild, Wild West, this cyberterrorism… Anyone sitting on a couch in his underwear could undermine the security of a nation.”
To jack up the stakes, Muslims, Russia and everything else bad from an American point of view are involved. And the virus targets not just Pentagon, but the entire Internet of Things — which would lead to a complete shutdown of high-tech life. Unfortunately, geeks sitting in a far away room somewhere, hacking into American systems, do not make for an engrossing narrative, especially since the president’s response is to form his own geek squad in a secret basement, tracking viruses, cracking passwords.
Cardboard characters
To throw in a measure of action to alleviate the boredom, an anonymous gang of mercenaries tries to kill off select geeks using sophisticated weaponry, but to my consternation I find that I don’t care about who lives or dies, probably since all of them feel like they’ve been cut out of cardboard.
The novel is written in two separate strands — possibly reflecting the Clinton-Patterson co-working relationship — and since the action part is dull, the more interesting theme remains the ‘inside the head of a president’ sections that are told in first person. His job entails sitting through briefings all day, so plenty of talking heads, but one gets pulled into what seem like honest musings by a world leader. He dwells, for example, on how social media has destroyed civilisation, and there’s possibly intentional if semi-discreet wit in observations such as this: “They can impeach me for anything they want. It doesn’t have to be a crime. Everything I did was done to protect my country. I’d do it again.”
Stray remarks about Russia and social media may seem like digs at the current president, but this novel’s in-your-face discourse also brings to mind other didactic thrillers woven around U.S. politics, such as the enormously boring The Ugly American which was turned into the most terrible film in Marlon Brando’s distinguished acting career. And just like The Ugly American , this too will be read by everybody despite not being particularly well-written, and result in political discussions around issues it brings up. So, on a final note, it’s a decent work for a debutant and with time Clinton might develop into a novelist to watch out for.
The part-time travel writer, part-time detective novelist’s latest thriller is Tropical Detective .
The President is Missing; Bill Clinton & James Patterson, Century/Penguin Random House India, ₹599
