By Jason Steger
Thriller
The President is Missing
Bill Clinton & James Patterson
Century, $32.99
It's a rare thing for James Patterson to get second billing. After all, he's staggeringly prolific, the world's bestselling author and a generous donor to literacy projects and bookshops. These days he frequently works with a co-writer, but it's invariably his name that sits at the top of the cover in capital letters.
Former US president Bill Clinton, right, and author James Patterson.Credit: MARY ALTAFFER
Not this time.
But it's not often your co-writer is a man who has twice been president of the United States, so perhaps it's not surprising that Bill Clinton's name sits above Patterson's on the front of The President is Missing.
The President is Missing by Bill Clinton & James Patterson.
Clinton has previously written memoirs and non-fiction, but this is his first official attempt at fiction. He has a known weakness for crime fiction - he is a self-confessed fan of the work of Walter Mosley, the African American author of the Easy Rawlins mysteries among others.
In The President is Missing - a slight misnomer, because the central figure, President Jonathan Duncan, is never really missing - the US is threatened with a destructive cyber attack by the Sons of Jihad terrorist group, the President is threatened with impeachment (sound familiar?) and there is a Bach-obsessed female assassin on the prowl.
The Sons of Jihad threat - Duncan has controversially been in contact with their leader, Suliman Cindoruk, whom another president might describe as a "very, very bad man" - is given the codename Dark Ages, in reference to Western Europe after the collapse of the Roman Empire. What it means here is the laying waste of the internet and the subsequent chaos.
So how does it work? Is Patterson the narrative man and Clinton the politics guy? Certainly it rattles along - Patterson knows all the tricks - and Clinton's grasp of Washington and its machinations is presumably better than most.
But it's not necessarily as simple as that. When Australian crime writer Candice Fox started work with Patterson they began with the big-picture stuff and then turned to the nitty gritty. Patterson had specific ideas about the setting while she had views about their characters.
"So we sort of chuck all our ideas into the pot in that situation, conversationally, over email ... Obviously he's the more powerful person in the relationship, but all my ideas have a place. He never just goes, 'Oh no, we're not doing that.' "
Nevertheless, there is a surprising clunkiness to some of The President is Missing. One important character is introduced three times in the first chapter, Duncan delivers an address to the American people that reads like nothing other than Clinton's vision for an alternative to the current US - "Think how different it would be if we reached beyond our base to represent a broader spectrum of opinions and interests ... " - and it seems as if Patterson gave him free rein to give shout-outs to the Secret Service, to express his views on covert action, the real politik of dealing with Saudi Arabia and Israel, to lament his lack of freedom to go out in public.
Yes, it's not unreasonable to read Duncan as Clinton's alter ego - even his beard is red - but the two authors take care to make their president a widower. No room for a Hillary figure, and certainly no intern lurking in the corridors of power.