Hilary Clinton & Louise Penny

Fiction 2021 | 512 pages

Hilary Clinton and Louise Penny team up to create this geopolitical thriller, State of Terror.  As the novel opens, bombs explode on buses in London, Paris, and Frankfurt.  Who is responsible, and will the United States be next?  Ellen Adams, Secretary of State for the new president, Doug Williams is thrown into international relationships, intrigue, and negotiations in the Mideast, in an attempt to discover who is responsible for more than 100 deaths, why, and where there are bombs placed ... nuclear, it seems ... in the United States.  There is no love lost between the President and Secretary of State, and she works incredibly hard and smart to eliminate the terror, gaining competence and respect in the process.

Blame falls to the to the ineptitude of the former President, Eric Dunn, who is not at all veiled as a reference to the United States' former president. He is presented as bombastic, mean, and an idiot, licking his wounds after he lost reelection, and playing golf in his Florida retreat. Even his closest associates called him “Eric the Dumb.”

The women reign in State of Terror.  Not only is the Secretary of State a feminist, but her adviser and counselor is a lifelong friend, Betsy Jameson, and is a tribute to Clinton's actual lifelong friend, Betsy Ebeling.  The media mogul is a woman, as is the person who receives an email with the first clue about the Frankfurt bomb.

While the plot is clearly Clintonesque, the character development, emotional sense, and relationship depths can be attributed to Louise Penny.  Louise Penny fans will revel in a special treat in the latter pages, as the tiny Quebec town of Three Pines plays a role in the denouement.

I vacillated between giving this compelling mystery three hearts or four.  I believe it is a bit overwritten, and the character list is long and can be difficult to follow, especially among the Mideast players.  I finally landed on four hearts because, not only is the story intriguing, but there is a special feeling, aside from politics, in reading a collaboration by two famous women of our time.  Yes, pick this up and enjoy the fun, the terror, the political intrigue, and the delicious characters.

April 2022