Hazardous Duty

October 7, 2013
Bestseller Griffin’s unusual eighth Presidential Agent novel (after 2011’s Covert Warriors), his third with son Butterworth, is sure to catch regular readers off balance. President Joshua Ezekiel Clendennen wants series hero Lt. Col. Carlos “Charley” G. Castillo and his team to resolve the wars against the Mexican drug traffickers and the Somali pirates. Meanwhile, members of the president’s cabinet and other top Washington officials, who have long suspected that the president is crazy, agree that this overly ambitious policy decision shows that Clendennen is “absolutely bonkers, as mad as the legendary March hare.” Charley, who’s about to marry Susanna Barlow (formerly Svetlana “Sweaty” Alekseeva of the Russian secret service), has no inclination to become involved in the president’s wild scheme. How he and the other series regulars deal with this thorny problem takes up the rest of the book. If Griffin’s many fans wonder what their favorite author is up to with these amusing, sometimes silly, hijinks, he explains all in a short afterword. Agent: Robert Youdelman, Rember & Curtis.

November 1, 2013
Griffin (Covert Warriors, 2011, etc.) takes a shot at humor in his eighth Presidential Agent adventure. Lt. Col. Charley Castillo has retired from black ops. Castillo left the service after new president Joshua Ezekiel Clendennen made a bad decision. Castillo went rogue, saved the day and left the president with egg on his face. Now, needing good PR for a re-election campaign, Clendennen, regarded by Washington insiders as "absolutely bonkers," orders Castillo recalled. Clendennen wants Castillo to gut Mexican drug cartels and sweep the seas free of Somali pirates. In the meantime, the president's intent on renaming special-ops forces "Clendennen's Commandos" and trading green berets for clan kilts. Griffin attempts a sendup of politicians, spotlight-hungry reporters, fumbling dictators and bumbling ex-KGB ghouls. Griffin's heroes are Delta Force, SEAL, Special Forces, Marines, "dinosaur" CIA agents, and former KGB and Spetsnaz tough guys and gals who've seen the light. Allied with the secretary of state, director of Central Intelligence, and other movers and shakers, Castillo's intent on preventing unnecessary bloodshed while humoring the deluded Clendennen, whose more pressing worries include coping with his wife, Belinda-Sue, who wants to be nominated vice president, an ambition complicated by her mother's escape from the Ocean Springs Baptist Assisted Living Facility in search of "Mason jars full of Mississippi's finest 140-proof white lightning." Characters are interchangeable, like patriotic moneymen who secretly finance covert operations, Secret Service agents studying The Godfather trilogy for leadership tips, aristocratic and well-placed foreigners, and Vladimir Putin-pursued Russian emigres who own Argentinian estates and Cozumel-based cruise ships. This SNL-meets-Spy vs. Spy story isn't Carl Hiaasen laugh-out-loud funny, but Griffin draws what humor he can from once-upon-a-time deeds of derring-do, complex plans to divert a president's lunacies, Gulfstream V continent-hopping and zero action.

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November 15, 2013
In Griffin's latest Presidential Agent novel, President Clendennen is having major problems fighting his much-ballyhooed wars on drugs and piracy. Casting about for a sure-fire way to score some big points in the press, Clendennen comes up with a plan that startles everyone around him. He wants to bring back agent Charley Castillo, long on the outs with the president, return him to active duty, and task him with bringing down the Mexican drug cartels and, at the same time, having a go at those pesky Somali pirates. So far it all sounds like pretty standard thriller fare, but throw this into the mix: there is a very real chance that President Clendennen is mentally unbalanced. This has been hinted at in previous novels in the series, but this time it's a major plot thread. Has the president lost his mind? And, if so, how will his insanity affect the future of the country? The action is solid, and Charley is always an interesting guy to hang around with, but it's that other story line, the one involving the president's mental stability, that really captures our interest.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)

July 1, 2013

Mexican cartels and Somali pirates are running rampant, and the president decides that Col. Charley Castillo is the only man who can handle the mess. Alas, he has just forced Castillo to retire. More in the "Presidential Agent" saga.

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