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Title: Balance of Power by Richard North Patterson ISBN: 0-345-45017-5 Publisher: Ballantine Books Pub. Date: 14 October, 2003 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $27.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 2.95 (44 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: Furiously political instalment in his series
Comment: Richard North Patterson's "Balance of Power" continues his series featuring the young Democratic President Kerry Kilcannon. As with the other entries in this series, it contains a plot almost guaranteed to fire political controversy.
Kilcannon, you see, is written as a man driven by principle. Earlier, it was this principle that made him force through the confirmation of Caroline Masters to the US Supreme Court even though she decided in favour of abortion in a landmark case. This time around, the issue is gun control.
As Patterson frequently reminds his readers, Kilcannon believes in this cause passionately - having lost his elder brother to gun violence and been wounded himself during his Presidential campaign (all similarities between Patterson's characters and real-life ones are of course wholly intentional). It is, however, the First Lady who gives impetus to the debate when her family is shot.
Most of the old characters from the Kilcannon series make repeat appearances here. Kerry and Lara (who marries him early in the book), Chad and Allie Palmer, even Macdonald Gage - the Republican Majority Leader who Kilcannon previously destroyed politically - appears as an "elder statesman" for the new Majority Leader, Frank Fasano. Another welcome returnee is Sarah Dash, the lawyer in the Tierney case which gave Justice Masters such headaches. Dash now, conveniently, works for the Kilcannon Center - an anti-gun violence group - and attempts to sue an arms manufacturer and the Sons of the Second Amendment (Patterson's thinly-disguised NRA) in a case which forms the backbone of the novel.
Any work of political fiction which attempts to deal with such a contentious issue as gun rights will always be controversial - one need only read over the reviews here to see that. However, given the record of President Kilcannon, one can hardly accuse Patterson of hiding his bias. Likewise, to claim that the ending was predictable is to state the exceedingly obvious. With nothing more than a skim of the blurb on the back cover, anyone could tell you the rough outline of the plot.
While it is fun to read this novel as an exercise in "spot the politician", that only serves part of the purpose. Especially when Patterson makes it so easy by having SSA President Charles Dane declare that the government would take his gun only "from my cold dead hands".
What this book serves as is an interesting entree into the issue of gun politics - an issue which is misrepresented by both sides of the debate. By no means is it intended to be factually accurate or unbiased (it is, after all a work of fiction). All it is intended to do is to tell a story - and that it does in spades. Critiquing it based on one's personal politics is an exercise in futility at best.
That said, Patterson's novels do tend to fall down when it comes to dialogue. Perhaps as a result of his background in legal thrillers, he has an unfortunate tendency to make all of his characters orate as often as possible. While there's obviously nothing wrong with oratory in the Senate or a court room (we could probably do with more of both in real life), it somehow doesn't quite ring true in the private lives of the characters. The effect is somehow disconcerting, as the characters become less believable human beings and more simple avatars for his own views.
Then again, the day I read Richard North Patterson expecting a literary classic is the day I should be committed.
Rating: 1
Summary: Faction or fiction?
Comment: Several scenarios in this book did not ring true nor make any sense (unless you were living in cuckoo land) and yet were presented with some authority as fact. Not possible I thought and further reading revealed the background of this nasty book and its agenda. Patterson may well be passionate about gun control, but why the need to tell lies? Forget the plot, this book is just a blatant attack on the NRA by a member of the Brady bunch. When you have to rely on distortion and lies to support a position then your position must be seriously flawed and desperate. This attempt to dress up propaganda as faction is an insult to our intelligence and the author has badly misjudged his self importance and influence. How fitting that two other well known liars endorse the contents of this book. If you have been a fan of the author's previous fiction by all means read it, but avoid financing this type of nonsense by getting a library copy and only if you want a hard slog and if you really really have nothing better to read.
Rating: 5
Summary: Philip (retired attorney)
Comment: This is an extraordinary book. There is no question that the author is anti-gun, as the author freely acknowledges in the "Afterword", but anyone who reads this book must be clearly impressed with the level of research & investigation the author has done. Alot of the "political thrillers" published strain the imagination of the reader with plots that are either fanciful or improbable. This book is in clear contrast to those other books. My hat is clearly off to Mr. Pattetrson.
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Title: Split Second by David Baldacci ISBN: 0446530891 Publisher: Warner Books Pub. Date: 30 September, 2003 List Price(USD): $26.95 |
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Title: The Big Bad Wolf: A Novel by James Patterson ISBN: 0316602906 Publisher: Little Brown & Company Pub. Date: 17 November, 2003 List Price(USD): $27.95 |
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Title: Blow Fly: A Scarpetta Novel by Patricia Cornwell ISBN: 0399150897 Publisher: Putnam Pub Group Pub. Date: 13 October, 2003 List Price(USD): $26.95 |
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Title: The Last Juror by John Grisham ISBN: 0385510438 Publisher: Doubleday Pub. Date: 03 February, 2004 List Price(USD): $27.95 |
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Title: The Conspiracy Club by Jonathan Kellerman ISBN: 0345452577 Publisher: Ballantine Books Pub. Date: 25 November, 2003 List Price(USD): $26.95 |
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