Weekly Words about New Books in Independent Bookstores October 10, 2021

Clinton, Penny Produce a New Political Thriller; Witty Mystery Series Features Unorthodox Senior Crime Solvers

State of Terror by Hillary Rodham Clinton and Louise Penny. Three years ago, former President Bill Clinton teamed with bestselling writer James Patterson to write a political thriller called The President Is Missing, in which Clinton's first-hand knowledge of life in the White House added credibility to a plot about a commander-in-chief battling a cyber-terror attack. And now it's Hillary Clinton's turn at the plate, as she and talented mystery author Louise Penny have produced their own timely political suspense tale. The pairing of Clinton and Penny is not merely a publisher's gimmick. The two are old friends and mutual admirers of the other's writing. So as Penny puts it, "When it was suggested my friend Hillary and I write a political thriller together, I could not say yes fast enough. What an incredible experience, to get inside the State Department. Inside the White House. Inside the mind of the Secretary of State as high stake crises explode." Clinton added, "In the summer of 2019 we were throwing ideas back and forth [when] Louise said, 'As secretary of state, what kept you up at night?' I told her a couple things. One was the threat of nuclear weapons in the hands of terrorists." And the plot of State of Terror was born. It will surprise no one that the story line reflects the authors' feelings about the Trump administration's handling of foreign affairs. The protagonist, Ellen Adams, is the new Secretary of State, joining the administration of her rival, a president inaugurated after four years of American leadership that shrank from the world stage. A series of terrorist attacks throws the global order into disarray and the secretary is tasked with assembling a team to unravel the deadly conspiracy. The attacks are the beginning of an international chess game involving the volatile politics of Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iran; the race to develop nuclear weapons in the region; the Russian mob; and a rogue terrorist organization. Adams and her team soon realize that everything has been carefully planned to take advantage of four years of an American government out of touch with international affairs, out of practice with diplomacy, and out of power in the places where it counts the most.  There haven't been a lot of early reviews - the book releases October 12 - but Time magazine did call State of Terror "a political thriller full of action and intrigue" and added, "Clinton and Penny create a heart-pounding mystery about terrorism, corruption and diplomacy, meticulously written with the promise of details only someone on the inside could contribute."

The Man Who Died Twice by Richard Osman. This is the second book of a delightful new mystery series that has the rare distinction of having both titles in the series on the national Indie Bestseller lists. This offering is ensconced on the Hardcover Fiction list, while the debut offering, The Thursday Murder Club, has a place on the Paperback Fiction list. I'm a big fan, but I confess to being a little late to the game, discovering the first book only after several months of ever-increasing buzz in the bookstore world. Since then, however, it's been one of my favorite mysteries to recommend to customers.

If you're new to the books, The Thursday Murder Club should be read first, as it introduces a unlikely quartet of crime solvers. Elizabeth, Joyce, Ron, and Ibrahim are the Thursday Murder Club - septuagenarians living in an upscale English retirement center. The four meet weekly to talk about murder, so imagine their delight when the venal developer of their village is killed on the grounds where they live. Even better, another corpse soon follows, giving these intrepid retirees another opportunity to prove that getting old needn't impede sharp wits and intuition. In this second installment, the Club becomes involved with the mysterious disappearance of an old flame of Elizabeth's, an ex-spy who may have stolen a cache of diamonds from an unhappy mobster. There are clues and twists aplenty as the determined sleuths track the missing man, showing both their age and their intellect. And in the end...well, you'll just have to read for yourself. In its starred review, Bookpage wrote, "It's impossible to single out any one feature that makes The Man Who Died Twice such an absolute treat... Richard Osman creates real magic with his characters. They are frequently laugh-out-loud hilarious but also entirely real and three-dimensional...If possible, this sequel is even better than the Osman's charmer of a debut, The Thursday Murder Club. This series is both a load of fun and an ode to how the power of friendship is important throughout one's life but especially during the final stretch. Don't miss it."

The Art and Importance of Engaging with Strangers Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know about the People We Don't Know by Malcolm Gladwell. Well-known social scientist and storyteller Gladwell takes a seemingly simple subject and shows how complicated it can get. Using the tragic case of a police interaction gone wrong as a frame for the beginning and end of the book (now out in paperback), Gladwell pulls examples from history and recent headline-grabbing scandals to illustrate his premise that understanding or just making sense of strangers is difficult. Whether it's misinterpreting signals or assuming the best of people, the average person can easily be fooled - duped into believing something that's not true or unwilling to accept deceptive behavior as such.    How did Fidel Castro fool the CIA for a generation? Why did Neville Chamberlain think he could trust Adolf Hitler? Why are campus sexual assaults on the rise? Gladwell offers his take on these subjects and revisits some of the most sensational news stories of recent years -  the deceptions of Bernie Madoff, the trial of Amanda Knox, the Jerry Sandusky pedophilia scandal at Penn State University, and the death of Sandra Bland, an African-American woman arrested in 2015 after a rather routine traffic stop in Texas escalated into a heated exchange that led to her incarceration and, three days later, death by hanging in her jail cell. In all these encounters, Gladwell asserts,  "the parties involved relied on a set of strategies to translate one another's words and intentions. And in each case, something went very wrong." "Gladwell has again delivered a compelling, conversation-starting read ... At a time when the world feels intractably polarized, a book examining the varying ways we misinterpret or fail to communicate with one another could not feel more necessary ... With a mix of reporting, research and a deft narrative hand, Gladwell illuminates these examples with the page-turning urgency of a paperback thriller. -- Chris Barton, Los Angeles Times

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