The American presidency comes with “thrilling highs” and “lows lower than a snake’s belly.” That’s what the fictitious President Jonathan Lincoln Duncan thinks to himself early in “The President Is Missing,” a thriller and escapist fairy tale co-written by Bill Clinton and James Patterson. Patterson does what he does best: deliver cliffhanger endings to short chapters and make the story move. Both of them seem determined to keep the shrill, bitter tone of real politics out of this fantasy. President Duncan is in trouble for supposedly having had dealings with terrorists. In an ordinary thriller, there might be a page or two outlining what this virus could do, but the Clinton touch feels present in the elaborate explanation.

Source: New York Times June 03, 2018 21:00 UTC