Balance of Power

Rating:
Summary: Extraordinary tour de force on gun control
Review: Patterson has written an extraordinary tour de force on gun control.

Kerry Kilkannon, recently elected President (from Protect and Defend), is back and planning his wedding to Lara Costello. Lara's sister Joan is being brutalized by her husband, and with Kilkannon's background - his father abused his mother - he can't just sit idly by. The inevitable tragedy occurs, but it takes Patterson a good fifty pages too long to get there. The tragedy and its aftermath spur political and legal maneuverings that were so repulsive, yet rang so true, that it literally turned my stomach. I had to put the book down more than once and just walk away from it to regain some emotional perspective.

Patterson has an agenda here, and he is quite clear about it; he delves into tort reform, but primarily this is a treatise on gun control, for which he makes a very sound, exigent argument, although I'm afraid he's preaching to the choir. NRA members wouldn't touch this book with a ten foot pole, while former President Clinton blurbed it. The book does bog down in places and occasionally seems repetitive, but all in all Patterson does a brilliant job of explaining the intricacies and treacheries of exactly how our government works, while drawing us in emotionally with a compelling story and three dimensional characters that we can't help but care about.

Rating:
Summary: I hate this book
Review: These libruls have no idea what their talking about. I don't read much anyway, so imagine my constellation when one of Amurca's better writers of psychological thrillers goes all pinko. Why does Richard North Patterson hate Amurca? Since I'm preznit, I just might have to make him sorry. Get Ashcroft to investigate his ash! He he, jes kiddin', folks!

Rating:
Summary: A FIRST-RATE READING OF POLITICAL INTRIGUE
Review: With numerous stage, television, and film roles to her credit you'd expect Patricia Kalember to deliver a first-rate reading - she does and raises the bar with her rendering of Richard North Patterson's latest D.C. based thriller.

With "Balance of Power" Patterson once more focuses on fictional Democratic politician Kerry Kilcannon. Recently elected to the presidency Kerry is set to marry his fiancé, television journalist Lara Costello. When Lara' sister is again brutalized by her abusive husband, John Bowden, Kerry intervenes. Then, the horrific: shortly after the wedding Bowden goes on a wild rampage shooting the innocent, including his wife and their daughter.

Kerry is so affected by this carnage that he promises to battle gun violence which means turning over Washington's most powerful lobby, the SSA or Sons of the Second Amendment.

It's at this point that Patterson's knowledge of Washington, its politics and power brokers really comes to the fore as Kerry becomes involved in a no-holds-barred battle with his nemesis, Senate Majority Leader Frank Fasano.

There is enough political intrigue and legal maneuvers in "Balance of Power" to keep everyone listening from rapid-fire start to boffo finish.

- Gail Cooke