[i=s] Edited by abhilasha1951 at 6-6-2018 08:44 AM *
The President Is Missing by Bill Clinton, James Patterson
[align=left]Former president Bill Clinton has teamed up with best-selling author James Patterson on a newthriller, out in June
Review by NewsDay:
It is not unknown for heads of state to write novels: Mussolini,Franco and Saddam Hussein did, but presidents of the United States tend toeschew fiction. (Except, perhaps, in their memoirs.) Jimmy Carter seems to havebeen our first presidential novelist with “The Hornet’s Nest.” Appearing morethan 20 years after he left office, it is set during the Revolutionary War andis so earnest and instructive that Carter most likely did write it himself. Fora short time, Donald Trump laid claim to the novelist’s mantle with thepurportedly erotic “Trump Tower” of 2011. Originally touted as “Donald Trump’sdebut novel,” a year later it was credited more plausibly to ghost writerJeffrey Robinson. And now comes Bill Clinton, teaming up with the relentlesslyprolific James Patterson to produce an action-packed cyber-thriller, “ThePresident Is Missing.”The president of the title is 50-year-old Jonathan Duncan, aformer baseball player and a U.S. Army Ranger who served during Desert Storm.He was held prisoner and tortured by Iraq’s Republican Guards after having beentossed from a missile-damaged Black Hawk. While some men might have capitalizedon their wartime experience for political advantage, not Duncan. (“Some thingsyou just don’t talk about.”) He is also a widower, bereft without his latewife. Adding to his afflictions is a rare blood disease — immunethrombocytopenia, to be precise — which is flaring up right now, just in timeto threaten his life as he deals with a whole heap of trouble.For one thing, the opposition-party Speaker of the House, LesterRhodes, has called for him to appear before a House select committee to explaina phone call he is reported to have made to Suliman Cindorak, head of the Sonsof Jihad and the world’s most notorious cyberterrorist. Suliman is not aMuslim, we learn, but rather a “secular extreme nationalist who opposes theinfluence of the West in central and southeastern Europe.” Duncan is also askedto explain why he sent American operatives — one of whom died — to thwart a missionby Ukrainian separatists to kill Suliman. The president, of course, had hisreasons, which we eventually learn. But for now, he tells his interrogators,they must remain secret. Not good enough, insists the despicable Rhodes: “Yougot caught with your pants down.”The fact is, Duncan has learned of a plot by Suliman thatpresents the most serious threat to the United States in the country’s history,and he needs the cyberterrorist taken alive. News of this had come through Ninaand Augie, a couple of young computer geniuses who have been working forSuliman but have switched sides — so they claim. After complicated maneuverswhich involve demonstrations of peerless computer hacking, the cultivation of apresidential beard, a clandestine meeting at the Nationals’ ballpark, and alethal volley of sniper fire, Augie offers to disable the virus — not, it turnsout, a straightforward affair.Treachery adds itself to terrorism, as Duncan becomes aware thatthere is a traitor in his inner circle, a group that includes his chief ofstaff, the vice president and heads of security agencies. In the end, the onlypeople the beleaguered American president finds he can trust are the chief ofMossad, the Israeli prime minister, and, to a lesser extent, the German chancellor.As often as not, the desperate game is played out in a hail ofbullets whose source is a professional assassin, a pregnant woman, code-named“Bach,” who is haunted by the horrors she and her family suffered at the handsof Bosnian Serbs. (All the main characters come with a good deal oflife-history filigree.) The clock ticks; suspense builds; and computer geeksscramble to dismantle a virus designed to bring America “to its knees.” Timeevaporates — leaving mere hours, then minutes and, finally, seconds.The novel, though too long and — except for the threat ofcyberterrorism — ludicrous in its plot elements, does have a satisfying twistat the end. So, we wonder: Who wrote what? Patterson is known for providing theplots and outlines for many of his countless books and then delegating theactual writing to a co-author, but it is hard to envision such amaster-assistant relationship in the present case. Bill Clinton no doubtcontributed his melancholy experience with political inquisitions, his persecutionby a vicious media, his understanding of the burdens presidents bear, and aconcluding speech that goes on and on in the grand Clintonian manner. And,perhaps, too, it was his fertile imagination that created the selfless,compassionate, fantastically brave, high-minded president at the book’s center.Please find the book @ posted by penprakhttps://www.craxme.com/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=317&extra=page%3D1%26filter%3Dtypeid%26typeid%3D38&page=8[/align]
