The First Gentleman — Book Nook

James Patterson and Bill Clinton are on their third thriller, and quite obviously it's set in the White House. The First Gentleman is about the man who is married to the President of the United States — and she is very definitely Madam President. As we know, Bill Clinton missed becoming the first of the first gentlemen in the United States when his wife Hillary lost to Donald Trump in the 2016 election, so he presumably had quite a few ideas on what being a first gentleman entailed — that, combined with his inside knowledge of the White House. Here it is, as expected: a story of murder. Maddy Parsons is up for her second term as President, and her husband is up for a murder he apparently committed when he was a football star, and the woman he killed was a cheerleader on the team he played for — something against the rules. Patterson and Clinton set two investigative journos, Brea and her partner Garret, on the trail of Cole Wright's past and whether he actually killed Suzanne Bonano or not 17 years ago, which they plan to bring out in a bestselling exposé for a leading American press.

Not that everything is easy in the world of investigative journalism. Witnesses vanish. The President is aware that a book is in progress and tells her security to deal with it — which obviously means mayhem, for she and her husband are a "unit," and she cannot have muckrakers threatening her Presidency at a time when the US economy looks like it might head for a crash and she is working to have a crucial economic package passed. The focus is not on the First Gentleman but on the journalists, who are fighting to prove that Cole Wright is a murderer, though the case is 17 years old and the clues may have gone cold.

There are the short sentences and chapters which are Patterson's signature, and the tantalising throwaway lines that keep the interest going. At the same time, there are Clinton's insider contributions to the story, like the fact that the President keeps on working despite the personal crisis at hand — something that Clinton had experience of, since he worked his hardest through his impeachment proceedings in 1999 because, as he said in an interview, that was what the American people expect of their President — not feelings, but delivery.

Divided into three, it starts with the trial and takes the reader to the backstory with its attendant crises and deaths, which go to prove that someone believes the First Gentleman is a murderer and is trying to hide the evidence — or is this all part of a political conspiracy? Clues begin to emerge from Brea and Garret's delving, opening up a can of worms and resulting in Garret's death. The rest is Brea's hunt to avenge him and trap Suzanne's murderer, no matter how powerful he may be, growing from naivety to understanding along the way.

The book is a sprawl that covers the legal and political fields with courthouse and White House drama while the clock ticks away. Is Cole guilty? Will Madeleine Wright keep her Presidency? As expected, there are confrontations, sabotage, mobsters, and more — but this is the kind of thing that one expects from the compelling combination of Patterson and Clinton, each adding their own expert viewpoint to the story. Yes, there are portions that fall slightly flat, and Brea, being a woman of colour, adds nothing to the plot — but the pace picks up again, and the suspense continues to keep you turning the pages (and occasionally turning to the end to see what happened!). It all adds up to saying that celebrities, especially political ones, whether guilty or not, are fair game — and the more powerful they are, the more enjoyable the read, along with the frisson of knowing that an ex-President is involved in the writing!