Hazardous Duty

Bestseller Griffin’s unusual eighth Presidential Agent novel (after 2011’s Covert Warriors), his third with son Butterworth, is sure to catch regular readers off balance. President Joshua Ezekiel Clendennen wants series hero Lt. Col. Carlos “Charley” G. Castillo and his team to resolve the wars against the Mexican drug traffickers and the Somali pirates. Meanwhile, members of the president’s cabinet and other top Washington officials, who have long suspected that the president is crazy, agree that this overly ambitious policy decision shows that Clendennen is “absolutely bonkers, as mad as the legendary March hare.” Charley, who’s about to marry Susanna Barlow (formerly Svetlana “Sweaty” Alekseeva of the Russian secret service), has no inclination to become involved in the president’s wild scheme. How he and the other series regulars deal with this thorny problem takes up the rest of the book. If Griffin’s many fans wonder what their favorite author is up to with these amusing, sometimes silly, hijinks, he explains all in a short afterword. Agent: Robert Youdelman, Rember & Curtis. (Dec.)