Once the turmoil of my wife’s last suffering year in 2021, and my 2022 homeless year were over, I found myself wanting to read fiction again.
Searching my local library a couple of weeks ago, I discovered this 2021 book by Hillary Clinton and mystery writer Louise Penny. I was immediately intrigued. Here’s what Time magazine said about it:
Hillary Rodham Clinton pairs up with powerhouse mystery novelist Louise Penny …..Clinton and Penny create a heart-pounding mystery about terrorism, corruption and diplomacy, meticulously written with the promise of details only someone on the inside could contribute.
More specifically, the story begins with 3 mysteriously connected terrorist bombings in Europe and the UK, that through difficult intelligence work are gradually connected to a coming attempt to use nuclear bombs in 3 locations in the USA – a story that should interest everyone, for it’s on our horizon already.
I’d never read any of Louise Penny’s novels, so I was delighted to learn that she is a Canadian author. I”m assuming that she is the master behind the intricate plotting using 4 separate main characters. If you’ve never written a novel, that that is no easy task. The most famous of these, and maybe the first one, is Tolstoy’s War and Peace.
But the way it’s done here, moving the story forward at a remarkable pace, is a lesson for even experienced novelists.
I’m assuming this is mostly Louise Penny’s doing, But don’t discount Hillary. She was a trial lawyer, a group of people who, in my experience, are disciplined thinkers. I’ve been interrogated by them in legal confrontations, and worked with defence lawyers on my own files often enough to know. Many lawyers become authors, and Hillary has significant non-fiction under her belt already. I see her hand at work here a lot.
The number one character, a middle-age woman who has become Secretary of State in the USA government, obviously owes a lot to Hillary, as does the realistic insider depiction of behind the scenes events around the world, right up to the Whitehouse, where one of these nuclear bombs has been hidden.
I enjoyed State of Terror, learned from it, and read it faster than I’ve read a book for a long time. I give it five stars all the way.
Alan Conrad 
It sounds like a book I’d enjoy too. I’ll keep an eye out for State of Terror.
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