Bill Clinton says he “loved” being president of the United States. Now he has teamed up with the world’s bestselling novelist, James Patterson, to write a political thriller that draws on his time in the White House, called The President is Missing.
“I love thrillers,” says the former president. “I read huge numbers of them. I’ve just finished the third book in the Red Sparrow trilogy [by Jason Matthews].”
He’s “a fan” of Patterson’s work too and has “devoured” all 25 of his books featuring the detective-turned-psychologist Alex Cross.
“I didn’t read much murder fiction or thrillers until the early 1980s and I just got into them,” adds the man who was elected president in 1992 and served for two terms.
Throughout that time, he had been harbouring a dream to write one himself. “I’d always wanted to do it,” he explains.
It is the first time a former US president has written a thriller.
What is the book about?
From the bowling alley in the basement of the White House to the treadmill in the president’s bedroom, “we really tried to make it as accurate as possible”, Clinton says.
But as well as insider details, the book aims to show what it would be like to president in the most extreme circumstances. It may be a novel, but it is about “things that could happen”.
The plot revolves around a devastating cyber attack on the US, which threatens to bring the world to its knees. With the clock ticking, the president disappears.
Being president can be “the most difficult job in the world”, says one of the few men alive who knows.
“What I want people to see is that this is real people doing real work. It matters. They make decisions. They affect your lives.”
And in what seems like a veiled criticism of the current president, Donald Trump, Clinton adds: “The more the election process becomes truncated into very short soundbites, and the more people respond to the theatre of it and the high or the low of it, the harder it is to remember sometimes it has to be a job.”
Source: BBC news
