The President Is Missing by Bill Clinton and James Patterson

Little, Brown & Co. and Knopf, 528 pages, $30

Well, I didn’t expect this!

After having read “Hope Never Dies” by Andrew Shaffer, which features former President Obama and Vice-President Biden in a mystery-solving caper, and being vaguely disappointed, I expected something similar from “The President Is Missing.” I should not have disparaged the association of James Patterson so blithely. This book was a humdinger and I was vastly more entertained by it than by “Hope Never Dies.” No matter where your political beliefs lie, this book should be a humdinger for you.

President Jonathan Lincoln Duncan is only a couple of years into his term when he is hit with the precursor to impeachment proceedings. The opposition-dominated House Select Committee has accused the president of colluding with known terrorist Suliman Cindoruk. His organization, the Sons of Jihad, has avowed the downfall of the U.S. Why would the president be talking to him? In a few days, Duncan will appear before the committee, and he knows that there won’t be much he can say in his defense. Because the situation is dire and a secret and approaching DEFCON 1. And there’s a traitor in the midst.

Combining James Patterson’s mastery of the thriller format with Bill Clinton’s familiarity with impeachment proceedings and the routines and terrors of holding the highest office in the land, the two authors seamlessly integrate their strengths into a rapid-fire novel.

Duncan "disappears" from the public's eye to meet with a skittish contact who can maybe help him combat a truly nasty threat to everything in the U.S. and, by association, in the world. There’s a code bomb in the technological system that ties us all together and that controls just about everything that matters: medical care, military defense, water, heat, electricity, and on and on. Duncan is the only person standing between the status quo and what his team has termed the “Dark Ages.”

Yes, I know, it seems contrived that only Duncan can save us. But Clinton and Patterson create a feasible scenario about why the number of people involved must be extremely limited. With limits, of course, comes a higher potential for disaster. Yay!

I hope you forget everything I just told you about the plot, because the authors create a tightly written reveal of the situation.  The authors cleverly create tension by starting the story off in the dark and only gradually increasing the sliver of light to reveal other facets.

Read it. Technical terms are rendered legible. The look behind the White House curtain is delicious. Political intrigue is sadly attuned to the real world, which makes it valuable in its own way. 

The only part of the book I thought had Clinton’s boot prints all over came at the ending: a speech before a joint session of Congress in which the hopes for the future of the U.S. are delineated. Other than that, it kept to the thriller format and was a triumph of entertainment.