In Wasserman’s comedic thriller, a heroic eye doctor battles a complex and deep-pocketed conspiracy.
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Francis Peterman, the president of the United States, doesn’t seem quite like himself. Suddenly, the commander in chief, who’d seemingly resigned himself to eating lentil soup lunches for the sake of his health, demands bacon and hash browns for breakfast and shakes up his staff for reasons that seem impossible to pinpoint. It takes Dr. Zach Webster, an ophthalmologist, to connect the dots when a routine exam turns up a glaring inconsistency; he soon deduces what readers have seen from the start—that a cabal of feral tech billionaires are primed to kill the real president, and that an imposter has replaced him. At the center of this spiderweb is Phoenix, a sinister super assassin driven by cold, hard cash (“His only political belief centered on who would pay him the most money”). Presidential imposter Jim Staples starts to act on his own ideas, and the complications begin to pile up, along with the body count. It’s up to Webster and his newfound allies—U.S. Secret Service agent Ray Lincoln and Peterman’s daughter, Sarah—to save the day, but whether the good doctor can conquer his terrible fear of heights, or his complicated feelings for his ex-wife, remains to be seen. In his debut novel, Wasserman has fashioned a fast-paced, entertaining tale that seems like the kind of story that one might see playing on the summer multiplex circuit. At the same time, the book intriguingly raises unsettling questions about the dark connections between big business and politics. Some passages seem ripped from today’s headlines, such as a weary confession of Staples’ would-be handler: “I’m babysitting a mad man.” How events might proceed in such a terrible situation, the author suggests, may be up to the American public.
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A fast-moving political thriller that gives new meaning to the expression “going rogue.”
