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''' '' DAREDEVIL PRESIDENT'S
DAUGHTER '' '''
''I'M ON IT,'' SHE SAYS, AGREEING TO ORDER a military transport plane to give him and his small handpicked hostage-extraction team a ride to Tunisia. ''Go with God, Mr. President.
THE PRESIDENT'S DAUGHTER BY Bill Clinton and James Patterson.
It goes without saying that nothing in this silly and highly entertaining book will end well for the terrorists, or the Chinese, or Pamela Barnes and her creepy husband Richard.
It's unclear whether, the rescue mission notwithstanding, it will even end well for America. The novel sends up a flare of distress.
It is relatively easy to understand why a former president whose daughter is kidnapped by terrorists might want to organize his own unauthorized paramilitary force to rescue her. But try explaining it to the current president.
''Director Blair, he can't be conducting military operations on his own,'' President Pamela Barnes whines ineffectually to her F.B.I director in ''The President's Daughter,'' the second swaggering political thriller produced by the unlikely writing team of James Patterson and Bill Clinton .. '' You have got to send agents there and stop him.''
But ''Director Blair'' can no more stop the the inexorable force that is former President Matthew Keating - a hard-living, no-guff ex-Navy SEAL, who as president, once motivated a naval commander during a kill operation by barking : '' Now you squids body-bag that son of a bitch'' - than Keating's friends can resist his entreaties for help in his foolhardy plan.
''You got it,'' responds Trask Floyd, an old military friend turned ''wealthy actor and movie director,'' when Keating asks for his support. '' If I'm not going to be riding shotgun with you on wherever you're going. I'll still be behind you.''
Patterson is the author who has launched a thousand best sellers, with an army of co-writers. Clinton is the ex-president whose other work include the memoir '' My Life.'' [ At 1056 pages, it is nearly 500 pages longer than this still hefty new thriller.]
Their first co-written novel, ''The President Is Missing,'' envisioned a scenario in which the American president, facing a deadly cyberterrorist attack that threatens to disconnect the entire United States from the Internet, slips incognito into a baseball stadium and tries to solve the problem himself.
Mel is seized by the terrorists while on a hike with Tim, her blameless boyfriend, Poor Tim. No sooner has he pumped himself up to fight off the kidnappers - ''OK, let's do this thing,'' he thinks to himself -than he dies '' in a spray of blood.''
Written in the breathless present tense, with typica; Pattersonian staccato exposition expressed in short paragraph bursts [''I checked my watch. It was time''], then book opens when Keating is still president, presiding over a botched assassination attempt on the terrorist Asim Ai - Asheed. It disastrously kills Al-Asheed's wife and three daughters.
AI-Asheed is a scary guy, but an important feature of this sort of book is a hostage who refuses to show fear. Mel's response to her predicament is to ''humiliate her kidnappers'' by, among other things, flinging a foul concoction consisting of her own urine and the chemicals in her cell toilet bowl into one of their faces while yelling, '' I' m not a little girl! ''
Nor has AI-Rasheed reckoned with the devastating single-mindedness of former President Keating, whose talents include throwing on '' ratty clothes, sunglasses, beard stubble and a baseball cap'' in order to elude notice.
He also has a band of loyal friends he can call on for help. Along with Trask Floyd, they include the former head of the Mossad; an ex-Saudi intelligence official; and the U.S. Air Force secretary, who owes him a favor.
Let us stipulate that we are not reading this book to gain valuable insights into the inner workings of United States foreign policy.
No, we are reading for as many references to military hardware as possible, a formidable alphanumeric arsenal ; the UH-50s, the AK-47s, the 7.62 mm Russian made Tokarevs, the Chinese- made QSZ-920 mm's the M4 assault rifles with TAWS thermal sights. You get the picture.
The terrorists seem hired from central casting, as does Jiang Lijun, a Chinese spy whose job is to represent Bond-movie stereotypes about inscrutability and arrogance.
''These peasants didn't get the message that it was time to wander back to their flea infested hovels,'' he thinks at a party in Tripoli, smiling politely at his Libyan guests. There's also Keating force, comprising the requisite array of deadly commandos from various elite agencies who treat the ex-president as one of their own.
''Get your butt over here,'' Claire Boone, a member of the National Security Agency's ''clandestine service,'' snaps at the former president.
'' The real people are still there, with their problems and potential, hopes and dreams,'' says Keating's wife, brilliant archaeologist and astute political blackmailer whose ''tanned skin is flawless.''
''It's just hard for them to make good decisions when their minds are filled, and their spirits broken, with so much crap.''
The Honor and Serving of the Latest Global Operational Research on Great Thrillers and Writings, continues. The World Students Society thanks review author Sarah Lyall.
With respectful dedication to the Students, Professors and Teachers of the world. See Ya all prepare and register for Great Global Elections on The World Students Society : wssciw.blogspot. com and Twitter - !E-WOW! - The Ecosystem :
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