UNPRESIDENTIAL BEHAVIOR SAVES THE DAY
Former U.S. president and Navy SEAL Matt Keating and his wife, accomplished archaeology professor and researcher Samantha Keating, face a horrific dilemma. Their daughter Mel, a student at Dartmouth, has been kidnapped by the world’s most heartless and hands-on terrorist, Asim Al-Asheed. His ransom demands require the cooperation of the sitting president, Pamela Barnes, who just defeated Keating by supplanting him at the top of their party’s ticket even as she served as his vice president. Barnes appears to be in no hurry to bow to a terrorist’s demands, no matter how dire the situation is for Mel Keating.
With the Keatings stuck in a DC hotel room, monitoring the situation via television and computer, and the ransom deadline quickly approaching, Samantha asks, “Matt, what are we going to do?”
If you’ve read many thrillers or seen a few such films, you can probably guess his answer: “Whatever it takes ... We’re getting Mel back.”
And herein lies the central dilemmafor “The President’s
Daughter,” the second authorial collaboration between former President Bill Clinton and the bestselling author on Earth, James Patterson. So many of the elements of the novel are stock, and yet the story remains involving, clear and occasionally even surprising. A fast and often interesting read, the book
nonetheless delivers a story so similar to many others as tobe largely ephemeral.
Many of the cliches come in the characterization. AlAsheed could not be any more unsympathetic or evil; one can almost picture him twisting the ends of a long, black moustache as he pours out contempt and malice toward every person he encounters. At the opposite pole is our hero, the former president. He’s had policy failures and a few regrets in his life, but his heart is always in the right place and he proves himself unfailingly honest, loyal and brave. Keating is the only character rendered in first person, as well, a technique used to depict him as all the more likable.
Many secondary characters remain memorable only by some small habit, trait or skill that readers are reminded of almost every time they appear. President Barnes likes relaxing each night with her “tumbler of Glenlivet and ice,” while Jiang Lijun from China’s Ministry of State Security repeatedly smokes his Zhonghua cigarettes. American National Security agent Claire Boone, who identifies herself as being “on the [autism] spectrum,” is a wiz with numbers, data analysis and computers. These may be easy, effective signifiers but they all too often seem to replace real characterdevelopment.
Without spoiling any major surprises, too much of the storyis predictable, as well. A shocking plot twist about a third of the way through the book turns out not to have happened the way readers wereled to believe — but only the most naive among them would have accepted what occurred at face value. A few characters remain morally ambiguous, but most consistently act as expected based on what we know about them from the get-go. And while there are always going to be casualties in a story involving military action and shootouts,
they are kept to an acceptable minimum so as to bring about a satisfying conclusion.
So, after hearing all that, what would lead anyone to bother with “The President’s Daughter?” Whatever his shortcomings, James Patterson has not become such a successful writer without also possessing some enviable skills. In a 595-page book with a dizzying number of characters, Mr. Patterson manages to define each one enough that it never feels like a challenge to remember who’s who as we jump between scenes.
The relatively complicated plot is never less than crystal clear and remarkably easy to follow. The novel never feels slow or unsteady. While it is impossible to know Bill Clinton’s exact contributions, it certainly appears he lends veracity to how people in our highest levels of government go about their jobs and how international diplomacy occurs both officially and in private.
One section of the book about the former president contacting the current administration even cheekily begins, “Unlike what bad novels and even worse movies portray…” And as one more incentive to local readers, the University of PIttsburgh gets a shout-out as the alma mater of fictional secretary of the Air Force Kimberly Bouchard.
“The President’s Daughter” follows Clinton and Patterson’s first collaboration, “The President Is Missing,” but stands alone rather than being a sequel. While violent and dark in many places, the book is almost fun to read as the situations always seem heightened and clearly fictional. Anyone looking for a beach read or pure escapist entertainment will be wellserved by this frothy, plotdriven and dramatic novel.