The President is Missing

To be honest, this was better than I thought it would be. This read like a big budget, 90’s presidential action film, and that is not going to be surprise considering the two authors. But — and this is a significant but — the underlying plot of the book was highly entertaining and at times even a bit surprising. I am sure that there were holes in the technical grasp of the cybersecurity elements (irrespective of the teams of advisors that must have worked on the book), but it was an imaginative concept that keeps you engaged and turning the page. Without too many spoilers, I’ll also note that even the ending had the right plot twists, and didn’t lull you to sleep as some of these political/spy fictions often do when the climax ends.
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With that said, this was still incredibly cheesy. It was just cheesy in a loveable way. It was clear that Clinton wrote the main character (the President of the United States) into a smorgasbord of every possible positive late 20th century stereotype of the great American president; tall, white, male, rugged good looks, broad shoulders, John McCain-esque war hero, agnostic to politics, moral and loyal to a fault, impossibly and unexpectedly smart and strategically minded even under complete stress, socially minded on all the right issues, and all the other greatest hits. But you know what — who cares. It is not every day you get to read a spy novel written by a former president, and the protagonist was so unrealistic, so incredibly foreign to almost any politician today, that it was a good fictional escape for a few hours from our daily political reality. If you are okay with not taking this book too seriously, you’re going to enjoy it.