Bill Clinton and James Patterson team up in new political thriller

NYTimes

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.

David Ellis is credited right up front as the person who “stuck with us through the research, our first and second outlines, and the many, many drafts,” so we know what he did: a lot. Otherwise, the former president appears to have provided inside information about how the job works when a president is paying attention (this novel’s POTUS reads his presidential daily briefing), done some speechifying and drawn upon his great love of thrillers. 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. Sure, the words “impeachment” and “witch hunt” make cameo appearances. And Duncan’s vice president is a woman who thinks she deserved the nomination. Readers may wonder why the authors decide early on to kill off the first lady, who was a brilliant law student when she first dazzled Duncan, and why some of her last words were: “Promise me you’ll meet someone else, Jonathan. Promise me.” Let’s just call it a setup for the sequel and a dose of creative license. Duncan is also a Special Forces war hero who was waterboarded in Iraq and could have been a baseball star if his injuries hadn’t forced him into politics.

So there we have Duncan’s noble character. Now for the dynamic if somewhat dated plot. President Duncan is in trouble for supposedly having had dealings with terrorists. Little do the press or public know that he was trying to avert a crisis, not start one. He is a sane, sensible president who finds out that this terrorist poses a cyberthreat so horrible that … well, there’s a reason the name of the looming internet virus is Dark Ages. 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. The book piles on loads of scary details about what the world would be like if your computer became nothing but a doorstop and every device in America was brought to a standstill.

President Duncan is much too energetic to tackle all of this while sitting at his desk in the Oval Office. No, he needs to sneak out of the White House (see: title), and go visit his wife’s longtime best friend (a fabulous, gorgeous movie star — think sequel) to have her help him with a disguise. Then he can roam freely, just like the action hero all presidents ache to be.

The book also gives us an assassin who’s after Duncan, and who visits Ford’s Theater while she’s waiting to take her shot. Sorry, gentlemen. That’s really pushing it. And Duncan already has a wasting blood disease. He’s not going to get popped this early in the story.

But he does get many opportunities to show himself as a decent, well-intentioned person in a world very different from ours. He’s stable. America has allies. Those allies are treated steadfastly and courteously, because Duncan knows his real problems are much closer to home. There’s a traitor in the White House, and the president has gone AWOL, in part, to try to figure out who that is.

Finally, there are the Russians. This is the only summer novel in which you’ll find a president summarily booting the Russian ambassador out of the United States, saying: “Do not ever test me again, Andrei. Oh, and stay out of our elections. After I speak tomorrow, you’ll have all you can handle to keep rigging your own.”

“The President Is Missing” feels like the result of a strong collaboration. Clinton and Patterson are a fine match, even if they get this story off to a slow start. They initially deliver chapters so long (Chapter 4: 11 pages!) that regular Patterson readers may be shellshocked. But once they hit their stride, they complete each other in the “Jerry Maguire” sense: Clinton gives Patterson the substance he often lacks, and Patterson (or some tough editing) keeps Clinton from drifting. He is able to dot the book with policy points, White House trivia (the names Frick and Frack are used, but for two men, not a pair of J.F.K.’s girlfriends) and heartfelt-sounding commentary on the wretched state of public discourse. This book takes a vacation from all the howling and never goes lower than a snake’s belly. That’s a visceral relief.

Some of its innocence may be inadvertent. Its villain is a mercenary Osama bin Laden type who makes no sense and silently boasts to himself: “I am Suliman Cindoruk. And I’m about to reboot the world.” But references to well-known hacking ops like Fancy Bear are much more disturbing than anything the authors can imagine. If they’re in the loop about the latest in cyberthreats, or even the latest in fiction about cyberthreats, it doesn’t show. Not even the assassin, who calls herself Bach and calls her beloved semiautomatic Anna Magdalena, is anything special. One of the livelier moments has a head-turning babe decked out in expensive merchandise transform herself from a tall redhead to a medium-size brunette. The authors may have a better feel for this kind of detail than for cutting-edge technological horrors.

Still, this book’s a big one. It’s driven by star power and persuasive-sounding presidential candor. “Savagery in the quest for power is older than the Bible, but some of my opponents really hate my guts,” says President … Duncan. Clinton has made sporting use of public loathing here, playing not only on readers’ voyeurism but on the chance to reinvent himself as a misunderstood hero. It’s transparent, but it works. Who wouldn’t enjoy a president who shouts “No! No politics today,” and actually means it?