Removal

August 20, 2012
David Baldacci fans will best appreciate Murphy's implausible first novel, a political thriller set in a post-Obama America. In the prologue, the attorney general briefs the country's military leaders on the secret Williamsburg Doctrine, adopted in 1965 to allow a military veto of succession to the presidency by a vice president hat the Joint Chiefs of Staff deem unreliable. Flashbacks make clear why the current president, Steve Wade, an unrepentant womanizer, is facing impeachment. Having lied to the public about his relationship with Lebanese national Lucia Benoni, Wade is between a rock and a hard place after Benoni is found shot in the back of the head, execution style, in a D.C. apartment. In her purse is a VIP pass to the White House. Uncovering what's really going on becomes the mission of the latest FBI agent in search of redemption, 30-year-old Kelly Smith, who reveals the usual high-level conspiracy familiar to readers of this subgenre.