Balance of Power

Rating:
Summary: RNP is the best political novelist of our time
Review: My first review of a book on Amazon was Patterson's "Protect and Defend" (P&D). After that, I read "Carolyn Masters" and "No Safe Place" (NSP). This is at least his fourth book of some common characters, and I understand that one other has Kerry Kilcannon at a much earlier stage in his life.

Patterson's major protagonist in the Kerry Kilcannon trilogy, who eventually becomes President late in the first book, is an amalgam of the charm and chrisma of JFK, the ruthlessness and idealism of RFK, the cunning and legislative skills of LBJ, and the intelligence, and some of the personal history and political resilience of Bill Clinton. In other words, he's quite a guy; perhaps a little too good to be true even in a novel. But that being said, in "Balance of Power", Patterson has written quite a novel.

I met Mr Patterson shortly after I read Protect and Defend, and he told me that he was working on and doing research for this novel about gun control. I had no idea that he would be able to treat this subject in the same way and in the same context that he had some of the most contentious issues in the abortion debate. But he has. This is a wonderful novel, fast paced, dramatic, full of fully developed characters that, especially if you've read his previous novels, (NSP) and (P&D), one can care about. I find it more than a little amusing that some of the most strident of the one star reviewers claim to be Patterson fans, but seemingly didn't know his previous novels had also called to task the extreme right wing of the American political spectrum that holds today's Rebublican party in thrall.

One of the things that makes Patterson's last three novels really fun to read is the connecting of both his most admirable and more dispicable characters to their real life counterparts in public life. Perhaps the easiest to place are Senators Chad Palmer, McDonald Gage and Fasano - the Rick Santorum character. (Although Sen. Fasano is much brighter and more admirable even in his slimy manipulations of those around him than is Pennsylvania's Santorum.) Sen. Paul Harshman, the neanderthal political hack who carries a lot of the right's dirtiest wash, contains so many of the more vicious and less admirable attributes of the Republican majority in both the House and the Senate, that he could be patterned on any of scores of current and recent past members of those once great bastions of democratic representative government.

I hope that now that Patterson says that he is finished with the Killcannon trilogy that he will imagine in some future novel that an unprincipaled and reactionary dominated Supreme court will replace Kilcannon with some pip squeak figurehead Southwestern governor with the character of a pimp and the morals and vision of an Enron CEO, and let us know what things might be coming down the pike under some future fictional administration. But that's too far fetched, even for Patterson's fertile mind, isn't it?

Like Patterson's last two best sellers, this is one of the best researched, most intelligent and principaled political and court room novels I've ever read. But I can certainly understand why the trogolodytes of the right might be offended by his characterization of some of their positions and defenders. Rick Patterson calls an idiot an idiot, a fool a fool, and a fraud a fraud. We can't have that, now. Can we? William F. Harrison

Rating:
Summary: Recommended No Matter Where You Stand
Review: The suspense of high government is played out in dramatic fashion in this well researched, realistic story of gun control and all the convergent forces that surround it.

As the story begins, President Kilcannon is called upon to act as confidant and protector for his fiancee's sister who is embroiled in a violent marriage with a jealous husband. After being encouraged to leave him, sister Joan attends the President's wedding with the rest of her family. On the way home, Joan, her mother and daughter, are gunned down by the distraught husband who used a banned automatic pistol and explosive bullets purchased at a gunshow in a neighboring state. From that point, the story takes on two simultaneous storylines, a civil trial and a Congressional-Presidential fight to pass a tort-reform/gun control bill.

Complex, deeply layered and absorbing, Patterson manages to personalize the gun control debate on many levels. He shows how tragic and meaningless ownership of such weapons are, how some consider banning them the first step in confiscation of all guns, and how a national organization representing gun owners wields the enormous power to intimidate legislators and influence their votes.

Patterson displays his talent as a novelist by engaging the reader and eliciting strong emotional reactions regardless of the reader's position on gun control. He has obviously researched the subject and developed a thorough understanding of the intricacies of government, enabling him to describe and create action among the Presidency, Congress, the media and the courts. His character development, dialogue and plotting sustain interest throughout this superb, highly recommended novel. Read it despite your own personal stance on gun control, there is a lot to be learned by both sides.

Rating:
Summary: Conservative?---Save your money!
Review: I usually don't like to write reviews on books I haven't finished but this one deserves all the bad press it can get. This book is so politically one-sided that I couldn't even bring myself to finish it. I got so bogged down in Patterson's political agenda (of which I don't agree with) that I lost total interest in the story.

One only has to look at who wrote the blurbs on the cover to realize that the book has a left-leaning agenda. Gun control is one thing but Republican bashing is another and there is enough of that in the first half of the book that any self respecting conservative would have to stop reading as I did.

I have been a big fan of Patterson's for many years and was sorely disappointed that he chose to politicize his novel. I probably won't bother reading any of his future novels after this one.

Rating:
Summary: What is with the bad review!
Review: I'm amazed at the bad reviews/comments a few folks have left here - I too am a long time RNP reader, and i'm surprised to read that people feel he was "liberal" in his arguments concerning gun control. I remember sitting on the train the week i read this thinking that he had to have spent considerable time and effort into this - he's portraying two opposing schools of thought, and I thought it was excellently written. I appreciated the two "appendix" notes from author following the end of the book, as well.

Rating:
Summary: The Liberal View of Guns
Review: It is too bad that Richard North Patterson did not spend as much effort talking to people on the positive side of gun ownership as he did on the negative side. His anti-gun bias comes through loud and clear from the very beginning. It is obvious (to me) that, like so many in the associations dedicated to banning all guns in violation of the second amendment, he sees no useful purpose in allowing anyone to own a gun.
The ulitimate end of this way of thinking is what the people of England now face. Gun ownership there is totally banned and anyone who uses a gun to defend themselves against an intruder in their home faces prosecution for the ownership and use of that gun.
I think it is significant that two of the glowing comments on the back of the book jacket are from an ex-president and a senator who were known for their lack of respect for the laws of our nation.
I have read my last R. N. Patterson novel.

Rating:
Summary: A Waste of Time!
Review: I strongly recommend that you don't waste your time and money on Balance Of Power. I have been a fan of R.N. Patterson's previous books. However, the plot in his latest work is much too drawn out and weak and the character development is very shallow.

Rating:
Summary: I am off to the gun store
Review: This is the first book I have read by Patterson. He is an excellent writer and it is too bad that he took such shameless liberties to push his agenda. I do not own a gun and am sympathetic to his cause, but RNP beats his message into your head with a sledge hammer. After reading this book I can see why people want to own guns--to protect themselves from the arrogance and self rightouesness of the intolerant left. This book is so slanted he even paints the Boy Scouts as a right wing political group. The arrogance really comes out in his afterword.

All that said he does tell a good story, hence the three stars.-

Rating:
Summary: An accurate and realistic novel on gun control
Review: I loved this book because of its realistic and accurate depiction of how judges and lawyers act, how deals are made in Washington, and how the NRA operates. I am a trial lawyer and I assure you that the depictions of Judge "Bond"--a thinly veiled portrait of an actual federal judge--and of lawyers Nolan and Fanscher are dead-on. Some judges stack the deck against plaintiffs. Many corporations destroy or conceal evidence and obstruct discovery. That witnesses are pressured by their corporate employers and the lawyers who represent them into lying under oath is also sad but true.
As for the reviewers who found the book unbalanced because of the unflattering picture it paints of the "SSA", I ask them: Is the description of the "SSA" inaccurate? Why did the NRA refuse to speak to the author to give him its side of the story? What justification can there be for allowing weapons like the "Lexington P-2" and ammunition like the "Eagle Claw" to be sold at all, much less at "gun shows" without any background checks?
None of the "gun control" characters in the book objected to the right of citizens to have guns. They just wanted reasonable safeguards in place to lower the horrific number of handgun deaths that occur every hour in America.

Rating:
Summary: Talk About Biased!!!
Review: I struggled through the first 80 or so pages (after the masacre) and then just couldn't stomach the complete left-wing gun-control bias. It is ok to feel that way, but you had better be able to show a little bit of understanding for the other side to make the story better. When I looked at the back of the book and saw that Clinton and Kennedy were both pushing it, I realized I was into the wrong book. Too bad.

Rating:
Summary: A Waste Of Time!
Review: I strongly recommend that you don't waste your time and money on Balance Of Power. I have been a big fan of R.N. Patterson's previous books. However, the plot in his latest work is much too drawn out, the plot is weak and the character development is very shallow. ...