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Summary
Summary
AN INSTANT #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
Named one of the most anticipated novels of the season by People , Associated Press, Time , Los Angeles Times , Parade , St. Louis Post-Dispatch , The Guardian , Publishers Weekly , and more.
From the #1 bestselling authors Hillary Clinton and Louise Penny comes a novel of unsurpassed thrills and incomparable insider expertise-- State of Terror .
After a tumultuous period in American politics, a new administration has just been sworn in, and to everyone's surprise the president chooses a political enemy for the vital position of secretary of state.
There is no love lost between the president of the United States and Ellen Adams, his new secretary of state. But it's a canny move on the part of the president. With this appointment, he silences one of his harshest critics, since taking the job means Adams must step down as head of her multinational media conglomerate.
As the new president addresses Congress for the first time, with Secretary Adams in attendance, Anahita Dahir, a young foreign service officer (FSO) on the Pakistan desk at the State Department, receives a baffling text from an anonymous source.
Too late, she realizes the message was a hastily coded warning.
What begins as a series of apparent terrorist attacks is revealed to be the beginning of an international chess game involving the volatile and Byzantine politics of Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iran; the race to develop nuclear weapons in the region; the Russian mob; a burgeoning rogue terrorist organization; and an American government set back on its heels in the international arena.
As the horrifying scale of the threat becomes clear, Secretary Adams and her team realize it has been carefully planned to take advantage of four years of an American government out of touch with international affairs, out of practice with diplomacy, and out of power in the places where it counts the most.
To defeat such an intricate, carefully constructed conspiracy, it will take the skills of a unique team: a passionate young FSO; a dedicated journalist; and a smart, determined, but as yet untested new secretary of state.
State of Terror is a unique and utterly compelling international thriller cowritten by Hillary Rodham Clinton, the 67th secretary of state, and Louise Penny, a multiple award-winning #1 New York Times bestselling novelist.
Author Notes
Louise Penny was born in Toronto, Canada in 1958. She earned a Bachelor of Applied Arts (Radio and Television) from Ryerson Polytechnical Institute (now Ryerson University) in 1979. Before she turned to writing mystery novels in 2004, she was a journalist and radio host for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in various cities across Canada for 25 years. She writes the Chief Inspector Gamache Novel series. She has won numerous awards including the New Blood Dagger, Arthur Ellis, Barry, Anthony, and Dilys awards for Still Life and the 2007 Agatha Award for Best Novel for A Fatal Grace.
Louise's title, The Long Way Home, made the Hot Mystery Title's List for Summer 2014. Her titles The Nature of the Beast made The New York Times best seller list in 2015 and A Great Reckoning made The New York Times best seller list in 2016.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Rapid-fire plot twists are at the fore of this derivative thriller, set in an alternative 2021, from bestsellers Penny (the Inspector Gamache series) and Clinton (What Happened), making her fiction debut. Douglas Williams, who has become president following the defeat of his Trumpian predecessor, has named Ellen Adams, a media mogul who supported his opponents, as his secretary of state. After a disastrous mission Adams undertakes in South Korea, she soon has another, larger crisis to manage. Bus bombs in London, Paris, and Frankfurt kill dozens, but no individual or group claims responsibility for them, suggesting that the atrocities are a prologue to future attacks, possibly in the U.S. Adams travels to hostile terrain, including Teheran and Islamabad, in a desperate effort to avert a mega-terror event on U.S. soil. Though the cadences and humor of Penny's mysteries are present, they're not enough to compensate for a story line heavily dependent on contrivances and implausibilities. This is more likely to appeal to fans of Bill Clinton and James Patterson's The President's Daughter than the legion of readers devoted to Penny's Inspector Gamache novels. Agents: Bob Barnett, Williams & Connelly, and David Gernert, Gernert Company. (Oct.)
Guardian Review
Having failed to follow Bill Clinton in the line of American presidents, former US secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton matches one of her husband's retirement projects: a co-written political thriller. State of Terror - written with Louise Penny, author of the Inspector Gamache crime series set in Francophone Canada - follows Bill Clinton and James Patterson's The President Is Missing (2018) and The President's Daughter (2021). Readers are bound to look for revelations that for reasons of discretion or state secrecy were omitted from the politicians' autobiographies. Bill (and James) created fictional President Jonathan Duncan; Hillary (and Louise) conjure fictional secretary of state Ellen Adams, her surname shared with a family that did provide two US presidents. Whether through collusion or coincidence, the only American spouses ever to run for the presidency both distance their literary avatars through a homicide pact. President Duncan is a widower; Secretary Adams twice widowed. Even so, it is almost impossible not to superimpose the respective Clinton. In State of Terror, such parallels are further encouraged by the America presented. The US has recently been ruled by "delusional" Republican President Eric Dunn (his first name shared with one of Donald Trump's sons), who was nicknamed "President Dumb" while running an administration of "near-criminal incompetence" that became "increasingly deranged". The worst thing done by Dunn is to have "pulled out of a nuclear accord with Iran", as Trump did. In Rodham Clinton and Penny's efficiently suspenseful scenario, Dunn's dumbness has increased the possibility of terrorist groups buying or stealing nuclear weapons and using them against the US. The crazed, dangerous Dunn is followed into office by a Democrat, Doug Williams, who Ellen considers "rude" and a "fool". Hard Choices, Rodham Clinton's 2014 memoir, is tough on then vice-president Joe Biden. So the novel can reasonably be read as settling scores with both the man who beat her - Dunn is not far short of an elected Hannibal Lecter - and the man who then bested him. British readers may also be struck that Downing Street, on Zoom calls, is represented by "Prime Minister Bellington, his hair askew as always", who is prone to "entitlement and random Latin phrases". Prison warders' belts contain fewer clanking keys. All the antagonists are male, reasonably reflecting both America's political history and Rodham Clinton's own. Expectedly, but effectively, the book targets Washington misogyny: when Ellen jets in from another marathon diplomatic trip, political enemies and news pundits of both sexes sneer at her plane-hair and creased pantsuit. Secretary Adams is more human, warm and amusing than even Rodham Clinton's admirers have often found her to be, although the side of the real politician that can seem reluctant to admit any wrong may be glimpsed in scenes justifying the use of non-official communications channels. (Revelation of HRC's use of a private email server for state department business dogged her 2016 run.) But the huge appeal of these Washington super-insider novels is the promise of unimpeachable research. When Bill's President Duncan writes letters to relatives of US troops killed in war, we are tinglingly aware that one of the authors has actually done this. In State of Terror there's compelling detail of Adams' schedule during an international crisis: living for days on planes, shuttling between embattled capitals trying to doze as time zones change, literally unsure where you are when shaken awake for the next sudden summit with a leader likely to be lying about harbouring terrorists or nuclear weapons. The body heat and ego trips of White House situation rooms also feel painfully experienced. The novel is geopolitically thoughtful as well, exploring a moral dilemma worthy of John le Carré: if the most serious potential threats lie within your country, is there a case for co-operating with nations usually hostile to yours? For Adams, definitions of patriotism are complex. As a politician, Hillary Clinton is unusually interesting from a linguistic perspective. "A basket of deplorables", her description of Trump supporters in a 2016 interview, may have lost swing votes, but was poetically striking. Although it's impossible in a twin-written novel to know who typed what, State of Terror has a literary patina: poetry is widely quoted, and Adams and her closest aide play a word game based around pedantry of grammar and vocabulary (sample bid: "A dangling modifier walked into a bar ¿"). More negatively, minor characterisation often consists of comparing the person to an American TV character, and action scenes contain so many references to a "pounding heart" that this may become the first novel to be diagnosed with tachycardia. The Clintons will surely be fascinating to future biographers and historians, who may find at least as many revelations in the couple's fictions as in their memoirs. Bill and James have already released a sequel, and I hope that Hillary and Louise also do. For all the attempted distancing, the reality of high American politics feels tensely, sweatily close.
Kirkus Review
An award-winning author teams up with a former secretary of state to pen a thriller about…a fictional secretary of state. There are two types of people likely to pick up this book: those who enjoy thrillers and those looking for fresh insight into one of the most powerful political figures of the last 30 years. Neither is likely to be entirely pleased by this slow-moving tale. The setup is solid enough: Ellen Adams has just joined the new president's administration when three Pakistani nuclear physicists are targeted by deadly explosions in London, Paris, and Frankfurt--an event that raises alarms about terrorists gaining possession of nuclear weapons. The first issue with this novel is that a secretary of state engages in a lot more talking than doing. The action, such as it is, occurs in scenes dominated by Adams' adult children, and this presents readers with another problem. Her son, Gil, gets off the bus one of the physicists is riding seconds before it blows up. He escapes because his mom gets a tip from a staffer and gives him a call, but the ultimate source of the tip is anonymous and Gil's reasons for being on that bus are unclear--and these unknowns are complicated by the fact that he's a convert to Islam and Islamic extremists are implicated in the attacks. Katherine, the secretary's media-executive daughter, not only travels with her mother as she jets around the world, but also helps out with a little light espionage. The authors are asking readers to believe that Adams' colleagues, her peers, and her boss--the president of the United States--are comfortable with her directing the American response to terrorist attacks in which her son was involved, nor do they stop her from treating a high-stakes global manhunt as Take Our Daughters to Work Day. This is all to say that sticking with the narrative means accepting that this is fantasy, not a revealing glimpse behind the curtain from Clinton. Indeed, it's not hard to read many scenes as wish fulfillment. As the story progresses, Adams dispenses entirely with subtlety and discretion to dish out some no-holds-barred diplomacy. Adams also has a schoolteacher-turned-counselor named Betsy Jameson, a character based on Clinton's real-life best friend, Betsy Ebeling. Betsy does some sleuthing, and her scenes will, perhaps, feel more familiar to Penny's fans than the rest of the book. This cozy mystery element is just as fanciful as the rest, but there's something satisfying about watching two middle-aged women save the world. More of a novelty for political nerds than a compelling thriller. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
What do you do when you've had a long, strong run in the political and public service arenas and decide you want something different? Write a book, of course, and especially a juicy thriller. Here, former presidential candidate/secretary of state/senator Clinton joins forces with top-notch mystery writer Penny to craft a story featuring a woman politician who joins a rival's administration as--you guessed it--secretary of state in a world undermined by the previous administration's bumbling. Terrorist attacks are breaking out everywhere, and the new secretary of state must put together a team to ferret out a conspiracy aimed directly at the U.S. government. With a one-million-copy first printing.
