Fantasy Politics: Review of Joseph Flynn's The President's Henchman

Fall is football season, and for many, fantasy football season. Participants study stats and games, carefully choose their players by whatever method is allowed and works for them, praying all the while to the gridiron gods and performing arcane personal rituals to choose and strengthen their players. At the end, their carefully nurtured teams reward the participants' hard work by playing opposing teams. I used to think politics worked kinda like that, but apparently not for the current Congressional lineup. Their infantile temper tantrums make a bar full of inebriated enthusiasts during the big game look like, well, rational grownups in comparison.

Author Joseph Flynn has put together a charming fantasy First Family team for us in his series of political thrillers featuring Jim McGill and his beautiful wife, President Patricia Grant. When Jim got his P.I. license after the election, the Secret Service changed his code name from "Valentine" to "Holmes." He couldn't imagine spending four or eight years in the White House cutting ribbons or offering cooking tips while Patricia did the heavy lifting for the country, and he had no interest in running the FBI or the CIA. With her complete approval and his 25 years experience as a cop, P.I. seemed a good fit for him.

It was a second marriage for both of them. After the then-Chicago cop had been shot and nearly killed, his first wife, Carolyn, felt that she couldn't cope with the stress, and they parted amicably. She had since remarried, but they remained friends and Jim saw his three kids often. He first met then-Representative Patricia Darden Grant (R-IL) when the life of her billionaire philanthropist husband Andrew was threatened by a radical religious group who wanted her vote on an extreme anti-abortion bill in Congress. She voted her conscience, and despite the best efforts of the police and FBI, the terrorists accomplished their threat. Within 12 hours, McGill had arrested Erna Godfrey, wife of fundamentalist preacher Burke Godfrey, and several others for the crime. Erna had been tried in federal court and was currently on death row in a federal facility.

McGill will accept only one member of the Secret Service and one White House driver as escorts, and chooses both very carefully. Young mixed-race agent Donald "Deke" Ky is his choice as bodyguard. Leo Levy, McGill's driver, is a good ol' Jewish boy from North Carolina, a veteran driver of the NASCAR circuit. Leo, while not willing to take a bullet for McGill (that's not his job, and besides, his mother would kill him if he got shot) helpfully offers to run over any shooter several times.

McGill rents himself a third floor office in a rehabbed building near Rock Creek Parkway and opens for business. After spending two weeks politely turning away lobbyists whose principals want to offer him five- or six-figure retainers "just in case" they ever require his services, he realizes he needs serious help, so places a call to his former police partner and family friend Margaret "Sweetie" Sweeney, an angelic looking ex-nun described as a cross between a Valkyrie and the Archangel Michael.

With Sweetie guarding his door, the crowds vanish and his first actual case appears. Chana Lochlan is the White House reporter for a Fox-type cable news service. She is receiving phone calls at her private number from a stalker who calls her "Gracie" and describes her body in intimate detail. She is sure she has never heard that voice before, and none of her lovers has ever called her by that name. He had opened their first conversation with the question "Do you remember the last time we made love?" Chana wants him caught and stopped, but is unwilling to go to the police––she reports the news, and doesn't want to make it. McGill accepts the case.

Meanwhile Patricia, a moderate Republican loathed by the extreme elements of both parties, has been handed a very hot political potato her first weeks in office. Carina Linberg, a colonel in the Air Force, has been accused of adultery with a married officer in the Navy. The Air Force is considering whether she should be tried for "conduct unbecoming an officer." Her married lover is the sole witness for the prosecution, and will not be charged. If found guilty, she could be dishonorably discharged and spend several years in Leavenworth. It has been assigned by the general to a very inexperienced lieutenant, in the obvious hope that he––and his results––could be controlled by his superiors. The President, in her position of Commander-in-Chief, takes direct charge of the investigation, assigning Lieutenant Welborn Yates an office in the White House for the duration and requiring him to report directly and exclusively to her.

The U.S. Congress or a barroom brawl?

Joseph Flynn is a seriously gifted storyteller with a wicked sense of humor, who leavens serious commentary and legal procedure with amusing and often outrageous incidents. McGill strolls around the city with only one Secret Service agent at his side and his car crawling a half block behind (wouldn't D.C. drivers just love that!) talking to anyone who stops him in the street. The President's Henchman is a huge tapestry of conflicting and interlocking interests that never stops moving; a feel-good story for America just when we badly need one.

It could have been ripped from the headlines, except that it doesn't go far enough in describing the intransigence and ninny-fication of our present Congress. Truth has outpaced even Mr. Flynn's fertile imagination there. For me, the saddest words in this book are the publisher's disclaimer: "This book is a work of fiction...Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental." That's a pity. Surely, we the people of these United States can, in sanity and good will, put together a pair of fantasy teams that can settle their disputes like competent adults within the framework of law to get our government working again! Go team, whichever side you're playing; let's not just sit on the sidelines, whining.

E-Books: The Cream is Rising to the Top

After a fairly rocky beginning, with thousands of aspiring authors dumping masterpieces free of any taint of editing, grammar, spelling, or even consistent story lines on the market, e-book offerings are beginning to look up. Some are offered by traditional publishers, who saw the writing on the tablet, and these are usually as well edited as their print books.

Some new authors are soliciting beta reading groups and submitting their books to any of the numerous editing and proofreading services that have sprung up, with generally good results. The best of these new voices sometimes offer stories very different from the cautious formulaic work that traditional publishers seem to want from their authors. Finding an author new to me this way is like mining for diamonds: frustrating and often fruitless, but the occasional gem makes the search worthwhile. Here are a couple of recent winners.

Requiem (A Kate Redman Mystery) by Celina Grace

Newly-hired Detective Sergeant Kate Redman has worked very hard to distance herself from her upbringing with her drunken, slatternly harridan of a mother. She nonetheless remains fond of her half-sibs (by various fathers), and is glad to help them when she can. When her gifted younger brother Jay shows up at her house with a painting that his tutors think may win a prize, she is glad to see him and hear his news. Jay is currently into hyper-realism in his work, and his painting of a drowned girl on the riverbank looks a bit too much like the crime scenes she deals with professionally for her comfort. He proudly lends her the painting until the show, and mounts it over the fireplace in her new house. That night, Jay takes her to a club to hear Elodie, his model and member of a folk rock band, perform.

Kate and her partner, Olbeck, are called to a drowning at the riverbank the next morning, and Kate is horrified to see that the body is Elodie's. The girl had not been drowned, but strangled and dumped into the river, from which an early jogger had pulled her out. Kate faces a terrible dilemma: report Jay's eerily prescient painting to the investigative team or hide it. Jay hadn't come home with her last night, but sent a text that he was crashing with a friend.

This short, tight British procedural, second in a series, is a remarkably professional and enjoyable mystery. While it is currently available only in electronic format, it is as well-edited and -paced as most offerings from major publishers. I immediately downloaded and read the first, Hushabye, and hope that the author will write many more Kate Redman stories.

The President's Henchman by Joseph Flynn

When billionaire philanthropist Andrew Hudson Grant was murdered by radical antiabortionists because his wife Patti, former actress and moderate Republican Congresswoman, refused to support a bill that would have pressured victims of rape and incest not to abort their forced pregnancies, Chief James McGill of the Winnetka police arrested the culprits in one day. Within two years, Patti Grant married Jim McGill and began her run for the presidency, to honor a promise she had made to her late husband Andy. Much to the astonishment of the pundits and powers on both sides, she won.

The new First Family provides several unusual challenges for the Secret Service. McGill, who opens a private investigation business with his old police partner Margaret "Sweetie" Sweeney, will accept only one Secret Service agent and a White House car and driver for protection. And while Patti is childless, McGill has three children by a previous marriage––children who live with his ex-wife and her new husband and who must be protected in place. Those children are being threatened, likely by the sect led by Reverend Burke Godfrey, whose wife Erna was convicted of the murder of Andrew Grant and was sentenced to death.

The first client of McGill Investigations is prominent newscaster Chana Lochlan. An anonymous man has been calling her at her private number. He describes her freckles, moles, and birthmark perfectly, and promises a return visit soon. He calls her Gracie, a nickname used only by her father. Chana has no idea who this is or how he can describe her house and body so accurately.

President Patricia Grant is facing serious challenges of her own: a messy military adultery case that could polarize the country and derail her presidency from its onset, and a market bombing in Cuba attributed by its government to the US-supported rebel community.

The author manages to weave these disparate story lines together skillfully, while presenting a truly horrific villain in Chana's stalker. McGill is a little larger than life, as you might expect in a thriller, but the characters and political machinations of those we elect to do "the Peoples' business" were quite believable. The unusual mix of political thriller and P.I. novel will keep me reading in this series for some time. The Jim McGill books are available in both paper and electronic formats, and the author has also published a number of non-series thrillers. So if you were put off by the early deluge of not-quite-ready-for-prime-time e-books, take heart––and maybe another look. There are some undiscovered gems out there.