President Bill Clinton partners with bestselling author James Patterson in a thriller about an under-fire president who goes undercover to try and foil a cyberterrorism plot.
The President is Missing will make for rapt, and for many, even obsessive, reading. Whatever the internal division of labor between Clinton and Patterson, the book is outstanding. It is a compelling thriller that gets you to care about the varied people in it and what happens to them while you inhabit the world it creates. There are one or two unresolved loose ends (I won’t spoil it by saying which ones). But that does not undermine the novel’s notably compelling characters, its deep insider’s view of the White House and politics, and the velocity that compels readers to turn each page with eager anticipation.
Clinton and Patterson’s fictional commander in chief brims with humanity, character and stoicism ... Without divulging any of the satisfying plot twists, I can report that the novel unspools smoothly. Only in its final pages does it get bogged down with a few too many unsubtle messages about the current state of our politics ... It explores the thin line between loyalty and duty on one side and resentment and temptation on the other that can corrupt even the most honorable of public servants, and it shines a spotlight on the deep commitment of America’s adversaries to tear us apart and weaken our standing in the world.
The President Is Missing reveals as many secrets about the U.S. government as The Pink Panther reveals about the French government. And yet it provides plenty of insight on the former president’s ego ... As a fabulous revision of Clinton’s own life and impeachment scandal, this is dazzling. The transfiguration of William Jefferson Clinton into Jonathan Lincoln Duncan should be studied in psych departments for years ... for much of The President Is Missing, Patterson seems to have deferred to the First Writer. That’s a problem. When we pick up a thriller this silly, we want underwear models shooting Hellfire missiles from hang gliders; Clinton gives us Cabinet members questioning each other over Skype ... The larger problem, though, is how cramped the novel’s scope remains. There’s no thrum of national panic, no sense of the wide world outside this very literal narrative. And so much of the plot is stuck in a room with nerds trying to crack a computer code. That struggle feels about as exciting as watching your parents trying to remember their Facebook password.
