So you thought only a president could get up to -- or down to -- hi-jinks in the sacred precincts of the White House?
Well, best-selling author Brad Meltzer, a onetime lawyer who hit it big taking the John Grisham trail with a mystery which spun off the nomination of a new justice to the Supreme Court ("The Tenth Justice"), thought hard about Bill Clinton's travails. And thought too about the possibility of a presidential daughter in the same situation. Not Chelsea, Heaven forefend. But how about a cute and nubile first miss with kind of hot, wild ways, hmm?
Meltzer -- particularly with two cute and nubile presidential daughters whose daddy and mom just moved into the White House -- figured he had it made. And, by gum, it looks like he made the right call, judging from a full-page ad this week in the New York Times leading off with a double banner-typeface headline: "The Nation Has Chosen The Thriller of the Year" (even if we're only starting the second month of the year).
The selected quotes in the ad run to words like "engrossing," "adrenaline jolt," "unpredictable and wildly entertaining." Words, in short, to make you run out and lay down your $25.95 plus tax in the hope of being thrilled long past your bedtime. Well, hype is hype, after all, and I'll never say hype hasn't been enough to keep more than one book moving off the shelves until word of mouth starts getting around.
But I'll say this right up in front: "The First Counsel" has more chances of lulling you to sleep than keeping you hastily turning all those pages to find out who dunnit before dawn's early light.
First things first: Our hero who narrates the tale comes across as a wuss of wusses. Michael Garrick, young White House lawyer, is absolutely giddy about his job and his access to power. He's as thrilled as a junior high-school miss on her first date. And when the first daughter, a stunning raven-haired beauty comes on to him -- well, it's just too much.
Apart from this prissy, oh-gee, oh-golly tone Garrick takes, I've got to admit the story gets off to a promising start. A secret date with the first daughter. Stopping in an Adams-Morgan gay bar, spotting a major presidential adviser in what looks like a too friendly contact with one of the habitu?s, trailing the adviser to the woods along Rock Creek Drive -- all at the first daughter's insistence -- and retrieving an envelope stuffed with hundreds of dollars hidden by said adviser.
Well, like wow!
I mean, major scandal.
But whom can our hero tell? The first daughter's not supposed to be out. He's got to protect her -- and his job.
The book runs to nearly 500 pages and never gets anywhere near the excitement and promise of its opening. Mainly, I fear, because of the character of the narrator. He's a Nervous Nelly par excellence. Worry, worry. Lordy, he makes Hamlet look like a man of action. And does he love her or not? Can a White House lawyer love a first daughter? On and on with the ruminations. His White House buddies are pretty pale figures at best.
Now Mr. Meltzer touchingly dedicates this book to his wife ("my First Counsel, my First Lady, my First Love") in terms that certainly run to the fulsome, to say the least. And in the first of his three pages of acknowledgments, he goes further, much further: "... if it weren't for you, this book wouldn't exist and neither would I." I'm for marital gratitude and all that, but I somehow fear Mr. Meltzer may have allowed perhaps more of his wife's feminine influence to seep into his protagonist than he really realized.
His hero carries on more like one of those ladies romance numbers. Not every thriller writer can be an Elmore Leonard or a Donald Westlake or an Evan Hunter, but -- please -- a little more hair on the chest next time around, Mr. M.