As Stuart Woods’ productivity has exploded over the last few
years (I assume with co-writers, but I don’t know that), his output has varied
in quality. Unfortunately, this book is one of the weaker ones.
The core problem is that there is not one book-length story
going on in this book. Yes, lots of little things are happening, but it’s hard
to figure out the exact plot. It seems as if Woods had a lot of plot ideas, but
couldn’t figure out how to develop them into novel-length plots, so he put them
all in this book. Whatever the genesis of book was, the overall novel falls a
bit short.
Stone Barrington is the lead character, but most of the plot
involves Catherine Lee’s run for the Democrat party Presidential nomination.
Much of the story takes place at the party’s nominating convention, and there
were enough shortcuts and simplifications of the process to make these parts of
the novel annoying. I spent a few years as a C-SPAN junkie, and I know that
that is NOT how the nominating process works.
That story wraps up about two-thirds of the way through the
book, at which point Ed Eagle moves to the forefront of the narrative. He has
been the lead of a handful of Woods’ prior novels including Santa Fe Edge, reviewed here. His storyline wraps up in a nice manner. Stone’s best friend
Dino is not in the book very much, just long enough for him to take the next
step in his career.
And of course, since
this is a Stuart Woods novel, everything works out for every character in the
best way possible – Dino is just one example. I noticed that this started
happening about a dozen novels ago, but there are times that the good fortune
of Stone Barrington and his friends is simply unbelievable.
Source: public library
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