Term Limits-Vince Flynn

Term Limits
Vince Flynn
Pocket, Dec 2009, $9.99
ISBN: 9781439148105

In Washington DC everyone demands favors or else will take their money and influence to someone who will grant that favor. The American system is built on trading favors, not stock. Senator Fitzgerald was in DC for over four decades; his job as he knows it is to get reelected. However that will never happen as an assassin breaks the senator’s neck in his home. Next stop for the Johnson’s Brothers Plumbing van is putting a bullet through the head of Congressman Koslowski. The final victim of the night is Senator Robert “Prince of Pork” Downs.

Everyone in DC is frightened from the military like precision of the assault. The FBI finds no clues to the murdered Congressman though the Fitzgerald’s homicide differs in means from the other two. Quoting Jefferson, the killers announce a plan to form a new perfect union since the leaders of the present United States chose corruption and reelection over ethics and what is good for the people. Everyone points at everyone else in the usual blame the donkey game. Only fed up first term Congressman Michael O’Rourke, a former marine planning on not rerunning, begins to put together who is behind the assaults.

This is an exciting thriller from the onset and never slows down as Vince Flynn makes the case that party affiliation or political philosophy of those in power is irrelevant as only reelection matters. Although originally published during the Clinton era, the underlying premise holds up through the Bush administration and looks likewise for Obama. Congress is worse as it is has career participants who even when they leave still hold power as lobbyists, etc. The recent Supreme Court decision on election funding will exponentially increase peddling, which adds to the timely reprinting of Mr. Flynn’s cautionary political thriller. Perhaps the only Rapp on Term Limits is Rapp never shows up.

Harriet Klausner