The President's Henchman by Joseph Flynn

Can’t count how many, but I seem to have read more than a couple books recently about the first female president. Here’s another.

President Patricia Darden Grant stepped into the national spotlight in Congress representing the ritzy northside Chicago suburbs. Before that she was a model and actress, so she wasn’t an unknown. She was married to Andy Grant, a wealthy philanthropist. Lots of old money in his family. But infertility had them childless in their lakeshore estate.

A few terms in, the issue that catapulted Patricia to the top of the Republican ticket was abortion. Being a moderate, her stance appealed to both red and blue voters. But the far, far-right wing Republicans of the populace weren’t as enthusiastic. The wife of a TV evangelist even threatened her. Telling Grant that she’d learn what it was like to lose someone close. The Grants amped up security around them and their home. Even had anti-assault barriers sunk into the lake bed off their shoreline. Worked fine until one evening, when Patricia was in Washington, Andy was seen in their 2^nd floor bedroom . Clear enough for a rocket propelled grenade fired from a boat took out the upper corner of the house. All those lakefront barriers were to guard against an assault, not a shoulder-fired grenade.

Local police, headed by Chief James McGill, and the FBI were able to convince a jury of the pastor’s wife’s guilt in the premeditated murder plan and she was convicted and imprisoned on death row. The pastor’s flock has a long memory. Not only about Patricia’s stance on abortion, but also towards Chief McGill and his chief investigator Margaret (Sweetie) Sweeney whose investigation and testimony sealed the deal.

In the months and years that followed Andy Grant’s murder, Patricia and McGill slowly became an item and eventually married. Grant was divorced with 3 kids ranging in age from 10 to 17. They live with their mother in Chicago area and the kids adore Patricia. These two blended families seem to get along quite well. Having the President in the family does have its perks.

When Patricia’s political star became transcendent, she was easily nominated and elected to be President. Much more than a pretty face. The sympathy vote didn’t hurt, either.

The nation now has ‘the first hubby’ to contend with. As a former police chief, he can’t see joining the DC social set and doing photo ops. With his wife’s OK, and the begrudging Secret Service going along, McGill sets himself up as a DC private investigator. You can bet his clientele will be well screened.

His first case is Chana Lochlan, part of the White House press corps and rising TV investigative journalist. She’s been receiving intimidating calls and notes. Not enough to involve the DC Metro police. But enough to think someone might be trying to use Chana’s White House access to get to the President.

One of the first military issues that Patricia must deal with involves an affair between USAF Colonel Carina Linberg (potentially the Air Force’s first female general) and Captain Dexter Cowan, a Naval officer in the Pentagon trying to add some stars to his shoulders. But he’s married, she's not. The case being investigated in adultery. A classic he said she said thing. A freshly minted OSI investigator, Air Force Captain Welborn Yates catches a doozy for his first case. Worrying that Pentagon brass might unduly pressure Capt Yates, President Grant has him assigned to be under her office. Pentagon ain’t happy about that.

Then there is Dr. Damon Todd. Civilian psychiatrist who seems to have worked out a way to modify personalities and manipulate his patients (subjects) to act how he pleases and remember nothing. Think of the technique as chemical hypnosis. Each ‘test’ so far is a success, some tests are even mildly humorous. Dr. Todd is trying to sell the CIA on his methods to ensure clandestine agents would effectively be immune to torture and divulge no secrets.

And if that wasn’t enough for President Grant and McGill to contend with, Cuba is acting up. And the pastor’s flock maintains a 24-hr vigil at the White House. The final straw is someone (church? Other?) threatens McGill’s children.

Flynn has a lot of balls in the air, right? And you know what? Despite the complexity of the intersecting plots, Flynn keeps everything heading towards interesting conclusions without getting all tangled up in plot details. To give all those plots the page space needed, this book is long, but not once did I even pay attention how much was left in the book. Sign of a seasoned writer.

But somehow, I ended with this book on my Kindle, so I assumed it was a recent release. Au  contraire. When I bothered to look, I was surprised to see this has a 2009 copyright and is the first (of 13) James McGill books. One per year and has maybe a half dozen titles prior to this book. Glad I stumbled onto this at book 1. Now I just must find more of these. A couple other Joseph Flynn books have been favorably reviewed here. I really liked this book and bet the series will be a ton of fun.

East Coast Don

The Next President by Joseph Flynn

You've been trained as a sniper and sent to Vietnam. You were good, but a shady branch of the Army, ostensibly to investigate 'shrinkage' of materials grabbed you. The unit was actually about shrinking the number of enemy leaders. Also managed to 'shrink' a US Army officer who was aiding and abetting the enemy. That one was off the books on your own dime. Did your tours, came home, got married, went into the clothing biz with your wife and relocated from southern Illinois to California. Had a son. Did pretty well and made a fistful of money. Then divorced. Your son decides he wants to go to college back in Illinois and enrolls in SIU-Carbondale, way down there closer to KY than anyplace else. 

By most definitions, living large in SoCal.

Sure there was that little flap after 'Nam with a KY loser whose family the Cade's have been feuding with for dang near 100 years. He pissed you off, but the creep died in a car-deer wreck on a back county road. That seemed like a good time to make that move to SoCal.

It's now 2004. The first legitimate black presidential candidate is preparing for an outdoor speech on the shores of Lake Michigan in Chicago. He takes the stage, bends over to hug a baby, and a bullet zips over his head. The shot was taken from well over a half mile away so the trigger was pulled ahead of his bending over. Lucky. No traces of who or where the shot came from are found.

A new KY thug is dead. Supposedly blew himself up when the IED he was making exploded. Said IED was set to be payback for a guy who wouldn't pay protection. Evan Cade is the prime suspect. See his girlfriend was the daughter of the guy who failed to pay up and everyone figures Evan was just standing up for his girlfriend's father.

Evan Cade, son of JD Cade, businessman with a past that few know about. And still a damn good shot.

JD and Evan are stuck. A quiet Treasury Department program has framed Evan in order to blackmail JD into killing the favored candidate. Kill Franklin Delano Rawley or your son will in all likelihood be found tortured and dead, in all appearances at the hands of their sworn KY enemies, but we all know whose hand would strike the fatal blows.

After the Chicago miss, JD follows Rawley to the LA swing of stops and with a couple careful (and pricey) donations to the Rawley campaign, manages to get close to the staff and the candidate. All the while he is trying to figure out how to kill Rawley, who is pulling the strings, and what can be done to get himself out of this mess, save his son, and avoid the assassination.

OK, now let's see if I have all this straight -
mountain boy turned Army sniper during Vietnam: check
still a great shot even into his 60s: check
very clever in manipulating people and circumstances without firing a shot: check
has a child whose very safety depends on his every move: check
author/character: Stephen Hunter/Bob Lee Swagger: nope

While the backstory of JD Cade bears a striking similarity to Hunter's Swagger, old Bob Lee labored outside of prime time politics while JD is smack in the middle and doing his best to survive and save his son. My first foray into the world according to Flynn was the very readable Tall Man in Ray Bans, recently reviewed here. I liked it enough to check out another title from the library. As good as Hunter and his Bob Lee books? Nope. Good enough to want to look at more titles? You bet. It does not appear that Flynn has developed the Cade character into a series (pity), but he does have a series of political thrillers about the husband of the first woman President, which I will be exploring in the near future. Not ready for a place in the power rotation, but just might be a player 'to be named later' depending on the comings and goings of the first husband.

ECD

Tall Man in Ray-Bans by Joseph Flynn

A couple kids playing in a dry lake bed outside of Austin, TX unearth a skeleton. Some early clues point toward the corpse being a long time fugitive Randy Bear Heart. Randy disappeared years ago after robbing a few banks, killing a couple bank guards, and a reservation cops. This means that multiple agencies are called in.

Austin PD has first dibs, but the FBI as well as the Bureau of Indian Affairs also get called in; turf wars are on the horizon. BIA Special Agent John Tall Wolf has, how to say this, a unique way of conducting an investigation and is entirely unimpressed with the courtesies normally showed the FBI. When he was recruited, he had his own requirements, primarily independence and not being sent to a reservation. His boss wanted to know if he also wanted a license to take scalps, to wit, "That'd be a good start."

Tall Wolf has to dig back into Bear Heart's history and find out how and why he managed to disappear.  He traces Bear Heart from a North Dakota reservation to Canada, to Texas, California, and Banff uncovering a bizarre set of circumstances surrounding girlfriends, wives, a son, songwriter, and a comely Mountie (even BIA detectives are allowed a little fun).

My brother-in-law suggested this book and by good luck and timing, it was on sale for the Kindle. Having just finished that beast of a book, the 700-page I am Pilgrim, Tall Man was a veritable short story by comparison. I have missed the mysteries of the late, great Tony Hillerman and his Navaho cops Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee, looking for someone to fill that void. One of the primary draws of the Hillerman books was the way he would weave Navaho culture and mysticism into the stories. Flynn makes no bone about Tall Wolf being Apache, but here Tall Wolf seems to live comfortably a bit more inside the White world of government agencies, and for that I'm disappointed. But that doesn't mean I'll quit here. This is the first of two (so far) Tall Wolf books and I will definitely be finding the next.  Highly entertaining.

East Coast Don