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    To Kill the President
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    To Kill the President
    Unavailable
    To Kill the President
    Audiobook11 hours

    To Kill the President

    Written by Sam Bourne

    Narrated by Jennifer Woodward

    3.5/5

    ()

    Unavailable in your country

    Unavailable in your country

    About this audiobook

    Maggie Costello uncovers an assassination plot to kill the tyrannical new president.

    A blockbuster thriller from No.1 Sunday Times bestselling author Sam Bourne.

    The unthinkable has happened…

    The United States has elected a volatile demagogue as president, backed by his ruthless chief strategist, Crawford ‘Mac’ McNamara.

    When a war of words with the North Korean regime spirals out of control and the President comes perilously close to launching a nuclear attack, it's clear someone has to act, or the world will be reduced to ashes.

    Soon Maggie Costello, a seasoned Washington operator and stubbornly principled, discovers an inside plot to kill the President – and faces the ultimate moral dilemma. Should she save the President and leave the free world at the mercy of an increasingly crazed would-be tyrant – or commit treason against her Commander in Chief and risk plunging the country into a civil war?

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateJul 4, 2017
    ISBN9780007423170
    Unavailable
    To Kill the President
    Author

    Sam Bourne

    Sam Bourne is the pseudonym of Jonathan Freedland, an award-winning journalist and broadcaster. He has written a weekly column for the Guardian since 1997, having previously served as the paper’s Washington correspondent, and presents Radio 4’s contemporary history programme, The Long View. His first novel, The Righteous Men, was a Sunday Times No. 1 bestseller. He lives in London with his wife and their two children.

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    Reviews for To Kill the President

    3.5/5

    36 ratings5 reviews

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    • 3/5
      Plot was plain, but the story carried through because it was based on Trump's despicable character and that of his team, and his surprising ascent to the presidency, which could all collapse almost as foretold in this work. Narration could have been better, often times it sounded very silly when the character voices were made up.....
    • 4/5
      This thriller has a very topical backdrop, involving an unnamed right wing and bombastic US President who is active on Twitter and who revels in insulting and offending a wide range of people, and in brazenly ignoring evidence when devising and implementing policies. The novel starts with this tempestuous POTUS almost triggering a nuclear war by threatening to bomb both North Korea and China, after a war of words with the young leader of the former country, a threat which is only narrowly averted. Following this, the Secretary for Defense Jim Burton and the President's Chief of Staff Bob Kassian, horrified by this narrow escape and the possibility of a repeat performance by their mercurial boss, look at ways to remove him from office, beginning with impeachment or having him declared mentally unfit to rule, but then concluding that removing him by more violent means is the only possible solution. A White House employee Maggie Costello, one of the few survivors from the previous liberal Administration, stumbles across the plot and is faced with a dilemma: "No matter how much you hated this man – and, my God, there was every reason to hate him – this, surely, was not the way to get rid of him. If the reason to oppose him was because he was trashing democracy, then how could you justify removing him by the most undemocratic means of all: assassination? You’d be destroying democracy in order to save it. It was madness.....To kill the President was not only to kill one bad man. It was to kill the idea that politics is settled by argument and debate and elections". As she tries to unravel the plot and finds out more, she is increasingly attacked in mysterious and sometimes rather far fetched ways.After a strong start with the very tense stand off between the President and his staff over the nuclear incident, and some powerful scenes when Burton and Kassian try to analyse solutions to the problem, the plot then becomes more standard conspiracy thriller, albeit with the strong (and very unsubtle) political satire. The end of the novel was rather sudden and seemed rather implausibly pat in the context of what had gone on before. Overall a good page turner, and apparently there are other novels by this author (Sam Bourne is a pseudonym for the Guardian journalist Jonathan Freedland) featuring Maggie Costello, who has an interesting backstory as a negotiator in trouble spots across the world.
    • 2/5
      An average thriller certainly not worth my time in a detailed review! Sam Costello discovers a plot to assassinate the president (who sounds very like a heavy set man with wavy blonde hair and a model wife!) what should she do? (have him shot I hear you say :) The only character worthy of a mention is the presidents chief strategist Crawford "Mac" McNamara. I only read this book as it was heavily promoted/reduced on "mobi" so passed a few aimless hours acquainting myself with this nonsense.
    • 3/5
      This novel is nothing if not topical. The basic premise is that America has elected to the Presidency a maverick former businessman with no political experience but a hatful of extremely right wing views. He is also perceived as a racist and misogynist, (though he views those labels more as badges of pride rather than slurs) who has filled the senior offices in the Administration with cronies and members of his family. As the novel opens, the President has been engaged in an escalating war of words with North Korea, provoked by its development and regular testing of increasingly powerful ballistic weapons. Five years ago, I think we would have dismissed this scenario as simply too outlandish to be true.The President’s fraying temper is pushed too far, leading him to burst into the White House Situation Room in the middle of the night and demand that America’s own nuclear weapons be deployed against North Korea. It is only after some deft obfuscation and quick thinking that he is talked down from this terrifying stance, and some of the more balanced member of the White House staff are left thinking that some drastic intervention is required in the interests of world peace. The novel then follows separate narratives tracking the development of a plan to assassinate the President, interwoven with the suspicions of one of the White House staff, a remnant from the previous administration, who stumbles upon the plot and is then torn between her own deep hatred of the current President and all he stands for on the one hand, and her belief in the importance of upholding the constitution and the democratic process.Some of the critics’ encomia compare this novel to Frederick Forsyth’s ‘The Day of the Jackal’. Yes, there is a plot to assassinate a President, but that is where the similarities end. Forsyth’s book is meticulously plotted, giving intricate detail about how to acquire fake identification papers, buy a high-powered rifle, and smuggle it across several borders. Sam Bourne’s assassin visits a gun fair and spends a morning creating a fake Facebook page.That is not to say this is a poor book. Far from it. Bourne knows how to write a gripping story, and he brings more life to his story that Forsyth ever managed. This reads like a novel rather than a manual. My only misgiving is that it all seems too rushed, After a careful, well balanced start, setting the context and introducing the principal protagonists, Bourne presses the hammer down and races to a conclusion as quickly as possible.
    • 5/5
      To Kill the President – A Brilliant Revival of the Political ThrillerThe thriller writer Sam Bourne, the nom de plume of the journalist Jonathan Freedland has revived the political thriller with this brilliant outing To Kill the President. Especially when the President in this book could so easily be the current resident at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, thin skinned not known for paying his taxes, fake news oh and a presidential daughter. Maggie Costello works in the White House, and is a remnant of the previous incumbent of the office of President. The current team know she is not ‘one of them’ but she is respected for being a stubbornly honest and principled operator, in a White House that is somewhat chaotic, very misogynistic and good at ignoring the facts.A call to the Bob Kassan, the President’s Chief of Staff, in the early hours to tell him the President is screaming in the White House Situation Room, demanding the access codes to the nuclear war heads. He has decided to attack North Korea for insulting him, and now that country must be levelled. Kassan is trying to get in touch with Secretary of Defence Jim Bruton, to see what they can do to stop him blowing up the world, one thing they do know he is nobody can actually stop him in his decision.Somehow the President has been talked round and no nuclear weapons are launched, but both Bruton and Kassan are concerned about the commander in chief. They both visit the President’s doctor to try and enforce him to say he is not mentally fit for the job. He listens but does not respond to their request.The following day the President’s doctor is found in a Washington DC park, dead, was it suicide or was it murder? The President’s right-hand man Crawford ‘Mac’ McNamara decides that it is best that Maggie Costello the independent counsel investigate the matter to make sure nothing hurts the President.In the course of her investigation, unexplained things happen to Costello, especially when she discovers that there is a plot to assassinate the President. She has a dilemma, should she save the President she hates, or allow the murder to continue and let the unknown Vice-President take over.At the same time, various murders are taking place, some in countries that are seen as friendly towards the United States. They all seem to have a connection and will Maggie be able to see it in time, she is not sure. The more she investigates the more the threats towards those she loves, but will she be able to save them and the President?To Kill the President really channels the current anxieties, especially concerning the current incumbent in the White House. This is a brilliant revival of the political thriller, with plenty of murder mystery thrown in too, To Kill the President is a book for our time.