Well, The Presidential Agent Series may have just nuked the fridge. Yeah, I don’t think it means I’m going to be moving on, but my respect for the series has taken a little hit. Maybe respect isn’t the right word. I’m struggling with how I feel, but I’ll sort it out by the end of this post.
This was a decent thriller, with Charley Castillo and the whole crew back again still sorting through the Iraq arms-for-food scandal that has been present for basically all of the books. The scandal provides good continuity and is a decent backdrop for the action, spy-craft, and political wrangling that Griffin has enamored me with over the last four books. The dialogue is still crackling and characters are still quirkily flawed, but cool.
This book started stretching things a little thinly though.
** PLOT KILLERS FOLLOW **
In the end, when he meets up with this secret society interested in protecting the interests of the United States, it just seemed to deviate from what heretofore has been something not too far off the charts of the plausibility scale. Listen, I know it’s always been implausible, and I don’t run from implausibility. But it’s clear that the next step is that Castillo continues saving the world on his own dime. Sure, that’s fine.
I find it interesting that this comes as Griffin’s son joins as co-author for the next book. Reading the preview, it really sounds fantastical. I’m okay with that, I’ll change my latitude a little and enjoy it.