Description:
Author Brian McGrory's experience as a veteran in Washington journalism ought to serve him well in this insider's take on presidential politics, which has been thoughtfully timed for pre-election publication. The premise is a good one: an assassination attempt just days before Clayton Hutchins faces his first national race for the White House, witnessed by a reporter who's been invited to join the campaign as press secretary. But there are too many holes in the back story to make this thriller credible, as McGrory should know. The plot turns on a secret any self-respecting reporter would have tumbled to at the time Hutchins, a self-made millionaire who was elected governor of a Midwestern state in a last-minute landslide, was appointed to replace a vice president who died in office. It strains credulity that by the time Hutchins ascends to the presidency (just a few weeks before the election, when the incumbent also dies in office) that his entire life has not been so thoroughly scrutinized that there are no skeletons left in his closet. A warning by an anonymous caller that "nothing is as it seems" sets reporter Jack Flynn on the trail of the truth, a trail that takes him first to a militia compound in Idaho and then to a workingman's bar in Boston before he realizes that the answers are hidden much closer to home. The flaws in the plot are even more glaring considering the paeans to investigative journalism and its heroes with which McGrory seasons his narrative. It wouldn't have taken Bob Woodward or Carl Bernstein 10 minutes of telephone research to conclude what the author requires three-quarters of a novel to figure out. But in an election year when the candidates compete to see who can put the voters to sleep first, The Incumbent may whet the appetites of a few political junkies. --Jane Adams
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