• Booklist Reviews : Booklist Reviews 2022 September #2
  What if a sitting American president loses his mind? And not just in a small way? What if, say, he enlists a couple of CIA agents to execute a top-secret (and wildly illegal) plan to wipe out his enemies, foreign and domestic? It's a premise that's not quite as implausible as it might have seemed a half-dozen years ago. The narrative is written in the present tense, giving the proceedings an immediacy that proves crucial to keeping the reader from exploring the story's weaknesses: a certain thinness of character and an overreliance on suspending disbelief (even once the premise is accepted). It helps that Patterson, writing with coauthor DuBois, employs his signature short chapters and constantly shifts the point of view from one character to the next, keeping us wondering what's going to happen next. Patterson's name on the cover pretty much guarantees an audience, but books with his name on them vary considerably in quality, from barely serviceable to quite good. Rank this one somewhere in the middle: clever and unnerving but a bit too slick to really get our pulses spiking. Copyright 2022 Booklist Reviews.

James Patterson is the world’s bestselling author. The creator of Alex Cross, he has produced more enduring fictional heroes than any other novelist alive. He lives in Florida with his family.   

Brendan DuBois is the award-winning author of twenty-two novels and more than one hundred seventy short stories, garnering him three Shamus Awards from the Private Eye Writers of America. He is also a Jeopardy! game show champion.