Publishers Weekly
07/18/2022
Early in this fast-moving thriller from bestseller Patterson (the Alex Cross series) and DuBois (the Lewis Cole series), President Keegan Barrett, a former CIA director, tells CIA officers Liam Grey and Noa Himel that he’s tired of America being “the world’s punching bag.” He’s setting up two CIA teams, one domestic and one foreign, with authorization to “break things, kill bad guys, and bring back our enemies’ heads in a cooler.” Despite it being illegal for the CIA to operate on American soil, Liam and Noa carry out a series of successful missions on Keegan’s behalf. Eventually, the two begin to have doubts about what they’re doing, and it becomes clear that Keegan—who has expanded his personal kill list—is sounding more than a little delusional. The president is soon acting totally paranoid, good people start to die, and war with China looms. The authors offer nothing new, but they throw in some historical anecdotes of interest, deliver tense action scenes, and tie up all the loose ends. Those who haven’t already encountered the insane president plot will have fun. Agent: Robert Barnett, Williams & Connolly. (Sept.)
From the Publisher
The perfect beach read for political junkies.”—Kirkus
Kirkus Reviews
2022-06-22
A rogue president schemes to start, and end, a cyberwar with China.
It feels almost like business as usual to CIA field operative Benjamin Lucas when the defection of his Stanford schoolmate Chin Lin from the Chinese Ministry of State Security goes pear-shaped: Masked men storm the meeting in which Chin is handing over supersecret information, Chin gets shot, Ben gets abducted and imprisoned. But Chin’s imperious boss, Xi Dejiang, is the least of their problems, or their nations'. Shuttling back and forth to reveal a constantly widening panorama, Patterson and DuBois focus on deputy CIA director Hannah Abrams’ stalled nomination as director, inoffensive finance officer Donna Otterson’s suicide when she’s arrested for passing CIA secrets to the Chinese, and the mysterious poisoning that’s sent Vice President Laura Hernandez into a coma. The spider at the center of all this skulduggery is President Keegan Barrett, who’s ordered CIA operatives Liam Grey and Noa Himel to assemble secret teams to terminate with extreme prejudice any Chinese espionage operations they can find inside or outside the U.S. Convinced that he’s been ordained to rend China’s digital infrastructure from top to bottom, Barrett has insulated himself from second-guessing by surrounding himself with yes men and neutralizing any dissenting voices by canceling their communications capabilities or having them assassinated. Echoing Fletcher Knebel's Night of Camp David, which they acknowledge, and Fail-Safe and Dr. Strangelove, which they don’t, the authors set their rousing tale of a few good citizens determined to wrestle the country back from a delusional paranoiac in a world that’s at once absolutely menacing and deeply nostalgic.
The perfect beach read for political junkies willing to change the frequency for a few hours.
