I wish Brad Melter's latest novel, The President's Shadow (#535) had lived up to the first two books in this series about Beecher White, toiling deep in the bowels of Washington D.C.'s National Archive.
Here, Beecher is drawn into the inner circle of the President when an arm is discovered buried in the Rose Garden. To be in such a secluded and well-guarded spot, whoever did it had to have had inside help. But who is responsible, and what is the purpose behind it? With no one else to trust, the President is forced to call in Beecher in his role as head of the Culper Ring, founded by George Washington, and sworn to protect the Presidency. Beecher himself is reluctant to be distracted from the pursuit of discovering exactly what happened to his father many years ago. Like the arm, any leads to find out have been buried by nameless parties. With a promise from the President to aid him in his personal quest, Beecher sets out to discover the perpetrator.
It was an exciting read up to a point, but discovering the truth about what happened to his father in the military wasn't a big enough pay off to warrant all the elaborate contortions the plotter(s)? went through to make the revelation satisfying. I still don't have a clue as to who, what or why the Knights of the Golden Circle apparently mean so much, other than they were presidential assassins. But if that's true, why didn't the Knights infiltrated in the Secret Service kill off the presidents they were guarding? Did they meet some sort of acceptable KGC criteria? Too many loose ends and unexplained coincidences and hints of betrayal never explained to suit me. I was disappointed in this one.
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