The New York Times and #1 internationally bestselling author of the Department Q series is back, with a terrifyingly relevant stand-alone novel about an America in chaos.“The president has gone way too far. . . . These are practically dictatorial methods we’re talking about.” Sixteen years before Democratic Senator Bruce Jansen was elected president of the United States, a PR stunt brought … elected president of the United States, a PR stunt brought together five very different people: fourteen-year-old Dorothy “Doggie” Rogers, small-town sheriff T. Perkins, single mother Rosalie Lee, well-known journalist John Bugatti, and the teenage son of one of Jansen’s employees, Wesley Barefoot. In spite of their differences, the five remain bonded by their shared experience and devotion to their candidate.
For Doggie, who worked the campaign trail with Wesley, Jansen’s election is a personal victory: a job in the White House, proof to her Republican father that she was right to support Jansen, and the rise of an intelligent, clear-headed leader with her same ideals. But the triumph is short-lived: Jansen’s pregnant wife is assassinated on election night, and the alleged mastermind behind the shooting is none other than Doggie’s own father.
When Jansen ascends to the White House, he is a changed man, determined to end gun violence by any means necessary. Rights are taken away as quickly as weapons. International travel becomes impossible. Checkpoints and roadblocks destroy infrastructure. The media is censored. Militias declare civil war on the government. The country is in chaos, and Jansen’s former friends each find themselves fighting a very different battle, for themselves, their rights, their country . . . and, in Doggie’s case, the life of her father, who just may be innocent.
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Not up to his standard.
Very well written and timely for today.
I finished this book a couple of days before the violence in the Capitol. This book left me feeling that as unlikely it would seem that this could happen in our country, that the potential is always there. Very thought provoking.
Pretty revenant in relation to the political climate lately
Olsen has done with the US and FEMA what he has done with other trending international news: turned journalistic curiosity and cutting edge writing into the basis for a great thriller. In this case he pulls from our headlines and projects a potentially horrifying future in which the government has manipulated agencies into taking away virtually every personal freedom. In the Epilogue he actually lists all the Executive Orders that have given FEMA potential power to do what he describes in his book. Frightening!!
I love his books and characters. The best!
3 stars for a book that was bloated by about a third. 592 pages was too long by about 200 pages. I expected a murder mystery like the author’s other books, but this book presented an apocalyptic version of the US government in chaos. He imagines a sinister plot to take over the government by one man, Thomas Sunderland, and indeed, points to a set of laws put in place setting up FEMA(Federal Emergency Management Agency). This agency usually handle natural disasters, i.e., hurricanes, floods, tornadoes, etc. But there are provisions in the event of a nuclear attack/ accident for FEMA to take drastic measures. So, while this is a possibility, the author spends way too long setting up his scenario. I almost didn’t finish this book. I took 3 weeks to read it.
One quote from the White House: “This was the time of the year when life affirming signs of springtime were supposed to dispel the dark melancholy of winter, but it wasn’t having any effect on him. Sitting in the world’s busiest workplace, Wesley felt paralyzed, oppressed, and alone. Far from a new season of hope and renewal, this spring accentuated a feeling of self-hatred and despair that was in danger of engulfing him if he wasn’t careful.”
Thanks to Penguin Group for sending me this eARC through NetGalley. #TheWashingtonDecree #NetGalley
Like so many other readers, I’ve been of two minds about this one. I was thoroughly hooked by the concept – eerily timely and oddly prescient as it is, having been written a dozen years ago – but thrown off a lot by the execution. I don’t know if it was the translation (there were some odd word and name choices that felt like they might have been attempts at directly translating idioms or ideas from the original Danish) or the editing (there were a lot of places where I think a very heavy-handed editor could have done the book a world of good because it felt like it rambled quite a bit) or something more fundamental than that…
The writing is good – very good – at times; but then it devolves into a rather loosely structured, repetitive, monotonous series of pages (and sometimes even entire chapters) that I had to skim or I’d have put the book down and never finished it.
The characters felt like caricatures (if not outright stereotypes) much of the time, and I had a hard time finding anyone I could genuinely care about – including the two dead women and Doggie, who should (if anyone was) have been sympathetic but instead felt like plot points rather than actual characters. The bad guys were odious – I expected that, and they did not disappoint. But their Big Reveal of all secrets, great and small, felt a little overly dramatic and blatant. Frankly, if I’d just read the opening through the trial of Bud Curtis, then skipped to chapter 40 and read from there, I’d have gotten the entire story in a much more straightforward – and enjoyable – way. If things could be summarized so succinctly, I don’t see why the vast chapters in between dragged on as they did… There’s a fine line between building tension and losing your audience as you pull them forward inch by painful inch, and I’m afraid this one felt more like the latter to me for much of the book.
I’ve heard great things about Adler-Olsen’s Department Q series; it’s on my To Be Read list, and my experience here hasn’t changed that positioning. But it has made me a bit more cautious and if I find that the pacing is a hallmark of the author, I suspect I won’t have the fortitude to persevere as I did with this one…
My thanks to the Penguin First to Read program for my review copy.
I love this writer.
Oh my… written over ten years ago by a Dane!
Washington politics gone awry with the election of a new president…