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4.0 out of 5 stars
HIS BEST SINCE ADVICE & CONSENT -- BUT A COP-OUT END, Mar 19 2004
This is a shorter book than the three previous ones in the on-going series about politics in the United States and almost un-put-downable. Somewhere along the line either Drury himself learned -- or a Kindly Editor had some grouchy words with him to impel him to learn -- to eliminate the dozens, even hundreds, of pages of inconsequential "human interest" and family chitchat that had so severely marred the narrative flow of the earlier books, particularly the second one, "A Shade of Difference."Here the action is practically non-stop from the first page through the final paragraph on the last page. As in "Capable of Honor" the narrative tension builds and builds and builds. And as in "Advise and Consent" there are some genuine surprises along the way. One of the major surprises is that the conservative Drury, who has been fiercely cudgeling the liberal media and all their dupes in the second and third books, evidently believes in Redemption. Two of the liberal boogeymen of the earlier books, Bob Leffingwell and Justice Tommy Davis, redeem themselves in surprising ways and now, apparently, have become Good Guys in the ongoing Drury narrative. What they'll be up to in the two final books in the series I'll be curious to see.... One great plus for this book: like the third one, it is absolutely uncanny how it foretells both the assassinations of 1968 that so enflamed the country at the time and the riotous Democratic convention in Chicago that year. This book was written from July 1967 through April 1968 -- Drury must have had a well-functioning crystal ball. One great minus for this book: Drury is now clearly writing melodrama ("a work characterized by extravagant theatricality and by the predominance of plot and physical action over characterization") rather than drama ("a composition in verse or prose intended to portray life or character or to tell a story usu. involving conflicts and emotions, through action and dialogue"). There's nothing intrinsically wrong with melodrama (and 1968, for instance, really *was* a melodramatic year in the history of the Republic), but here Drury cranks the level up a little higher than I think it should be. The ending, which I won't reveal to you, comes as a surprising shock and is intended clearly to open the way to the next book. And the way that Drury *deals* with the ending is pure melodrama -- he is only interested in getting the reader to buy the next book to find out just what the hell is going on here. He should have been writing scripts for the cliff-hanger endings of the old Western serials.... All in all, a 4-star effort. It would have been a clear 5-star except for the ending.
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