CHICAGO TRIBUNE
By Dick Adler
We first meet Will Travis in a short prologue to Alan Russell’s latest sharp and sassy thriller; as a smart West Point cadet, showing off his prodigious memory. Then we move to the present, where Travis seems to be working as a restaurant detective. He checks out bars and eateries, rating their food and service for his clients, their corporate owners. It’s not a dishonorable occupation, but we can’t help but ask what happened to the bright, ambitious young soldier of 15 years ago.
The answer to that – not only credible but deeply touching – is only part of the secret of Russell’s considerable success here. He immediately plunges Travis into an intriguing mystery: Is Claire Harrington, the young woman he rescues from what appears to be an attempt on her life in the parking lot of a Maryland restaurant, really the daughter of a U.S. senator who recently committed suicide, and is the convoluted conspiracy theory she spouts anything more than the product of a depressed and/or demented mind?
Harrington turns out to be another interesting creation: not quite what she seems to be, but also not really what we fear she is. As she and Travis move through an increasingly plausible scenario in which a leading presidential candidate is probably a murderer hiding past crimes, Russell has us in the palm of his hand. The Maryland setting is fresh and crisply sketched, and along the way we pick up tips that could prove valuable if we ever have to rate a bar or restaurant. “I don’t particularly care for vodka,” Travis tells us at once point, “but I always make a point of ordering a clear drink because it’s easy to look through.”
San Diego Union-Tribune
December 21, 2003
Robert Wade, reviewer
POLITICAL SUICIDE
Alan Russell
St. Martin’s Minotaur, 336 pages, $24.95
San Diego’s Alan Russell is widely recognized as one of today’s top crime writers, and his latest novel reaffirms his right to that rating. Ingeniously imagined and skillfully told, it must be included in any list of this year’s best thrillers.
Chief among its virtues is its protagonist, with whose creation Russell moves outside the box of the traditional private eye. Will Travis is an investigator, to be sure. However, his territory is not the familiar mean streets but the posh world of upscale hotels and restaurants, where he performs undercover audits designed to ferret out their flaws and improve their performance.
The job calls for highly developed powers of observation. It is that talent that causes him, while critiquing a hotel bar, to detect a man slip something in the drink of his attractive female companion. While it’s none of his business, Will isn’t the type to sit idly by.
But coming to the aid of the damsel in distress puts him smack in the middle of an attempted murder. He and Claire, the intended victim, escape the assassins but their troubles are far from over. Claire claims that she has been targeted because she is attempting to prove that the death of her father, a once-prominent congressman, was murder, not suicide as the authorities claim. Will suspects she’s not being completely candid, but by now he’s too smitten to care.
Soon Will and Claire are being pursued by both crooks and cops. As the noose tightens and casualties mount, Will discovers that they are embroiled in a grime game that has the presidency as its prize.
POLITICAL SUICIDE combines an intricate plot with an inside take on the undercover auditing profession, gilds it with a satisfying romance and even slips in a few history lessons. Russell, who has previously explored the noir and the mystery-comedy genres, has found a unique niche in the field of political intrigue.
Kirkus Reviews
Thomas Leitch
Wanted: Filmmaker unafraid of offending church, D.C. VIPs
Just how camera-ready should a novel suitable for adaptation be? How much do you want to change – how much should you have to change – in order to turn a successful novel into a successful movie? It’s a question raised with special urgency by three promising properties based in different ways on current events.
The most straightforward case is Alan Russell’s POLITICAL SUICIDE (St. Martin’s Minotaur), which unfolds like a movie already. It’s the story of Will Travis, a private eye who monitors service for restaurant and hotel owners, and Claire Harrington, a congressman’s daughter he saves from getting killed. Turns out that people are trying to kill Claire for the same reasons people succeeded 16 years ago in killing her father, whose unpublished memoir of D.C. shenanigans cut a little too close to the bone. After a few key misunderstandings, the cops join the killers in chasing Will and Claire, and the story heads into territory blazed by thrillers from “The 39 Steps” to “Enemy of the State.” Russell’s main contribution is to keep things moving and stay out of the way while he provides one-stop shopping for Beltway gossip. The screenwriters will have to pick and choose which dirty secrets to keep but the novel is already laid out scene by scene with a camera eye.
Midwest Book Review
By Harriet Klausner
His license says he’s a private investigator but his job calls for him to evaluate the services of client hotels and restaurant. While evaluating the service of the Blue Crab Inn in Maryland, he notices a man put something in a woman’s drink at the bar. When she turns drowsy and disoriented, they try to hustle her out but Will Travis pretends to know the woman and gets her away from them. A shootout occurs and a man is dead at the hands of his victim Claire Harrington. The two escape and team up to get away from the scene of the crime. Claire confesses that her father recently died and the police think it was a suicide but she believes it was murder. The perpetrator is one of the candidates running for President of the United States. Suddenly, Claire and Will are wanted by the state and federal agencies on bogus murder charges and it is clear that the candidate is manipulating events. Alan Russell’s political thriller POLITICAL SUICIDE takes off at light speed and doesn’t slow down until the unbelievably exciting climax. The hero is a true patriot, honest to the core and thoroughly likeable thus endearing himself to the audience. The author’s story is an indictment of a political system where one needs money, image, spin control, and charisma to ever having a chance of winning office. This political thriller is both timely and exciting.
Booklist
David Pitt
Will Travis is the kind of PI who barely registers on the radar of his own profession. When the story opens, he’s shopping bars, checking out their service standards, and reporting back to management, about as low a job on the investigative totem pole as there is. But then he foils what appears to be an attempt to murder a young woman, and the would-be victim tells him a wild story about her own father being murdered and the culprit being a presidential candidate. Suddenly, Will’s life gets a whole lot more exciting. This is a story that’s been done before, but Russell makes it seem new all over again. He’s a skillful writer, and his central character Travis is a guy we’d like to know: stuck in a bottom-drawer job but possessed of a sharp intellect, a sense of humor, and just the right amount of tough-guy attitude. He’s just the kind of character who would make a fine anchor for a private-eye series.
A Novel View
Tammy Michaels
From the first pages, I laughed and cried and knew I was in for an absolutely marvelous ride! Alan Russell has authored eight previous works, each different, exploring the talents of this oh-so gifted author. Alan started with the classical who-dun-its, from there made his mark in the world of humorous mysteries, psychological suspense, and now thrillers are rounding out his collection. Sometimes it is hard to believe the same person wrote it all – but he did, and with his newest release POLITICAL SUICIDE Alan does it again: One solid story by a wonderfully gifted voice.
Meet Will Travis, hospitality specialist. So what does all this mean? Will travels around, undercover eating and vacationing in his clients restaurants and resorts, watching to make sure that everyone not only does their job, but does it in the manner and style to which the owner himself might. For good measure, Alan throws in a wonderful tidbit featuring Wolfgang Puck that brought on belly laughs. For anyone who is familiar with his past works, Alan’s sense of humor excels.
During the course of one of his audits, Will rescues a congressman’s daughter named Claire Harrington and gets more than he bargained for. Claire is searching for the reason behind her father’s suicide, which perhaps wasn’t a suicide at all.
Worthy of mention, in the beginning of the novel Will Travis recites MacArthur’s beautiful and magnificent Farewell Speech. Alan chose just the right spot to incorporate it, adding a fabulous touch to the novel.
Alan takes us on a smart, savvy wild ride through Washington and politics that an insider would know, and a sharp witty sense of humor only adds to this novel’s depth. I so enjoyed this book, and will without a doubt read his next book, whatever genre he chooses to work in. Once you read him, I think you will too. Once a fan of Alan Russell, always a fan!
San Diego Magazine
By Eilene Zimmerman
Will Travis is a West Point dropout who makes a living working undercover for hotels and restaurants, critiquing the service and staff. Travis is only 35 but is already so loaded down with guilt and sadness he’s given up any hope of happiness. His life changes when he unwittingly prevents the murder of a congressman’s daughter and winds up ensnared in a complicated, dangerous case of political corruption.
The woman he saves is smart, beautiful Claire Harrington, on a mission to prove her father’s death – ruled a suicide – was actually murder. Travis decides to try to help, risking his own life more than once. Political Suicide is also the story of a run for the presidency gone terribly wrong: A candidate is murdering those who might stand in his way.
Russell keeps the name of the murderer a secret until the end – and the tension by then is almost unbearable – but that secrecy also hurts the book. The chapters devoted to the corrupt candidate are wooden and vague: “The Candidate waved to the enthusiastic gathering,” or “The Candidate thought about the skeleton in his closet.” It’s a lackluster juxtaposition to the other chapters, where Travis and Harrington are on the run.
Page-turner would usually be an understatement in describing Russell’s thrillers, yet POLITICAL SUICIDE has a lot of slow-moving passages, and its beginning feels forced. The prologue contains five pages of General MacArthur’s 1062 West Point address; within the book are nearly three pages of rhyming army cadences, too much information about a duel between Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr and pages of details about lazy bartenders, dirty saltshakers and impolite wait staffs. Yet despite its weaknesses, POLITICAL SUICIDE picks up speed as it moves along and, in the end, is a rocket ride of action, political intrigue, and suspense.
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