2 out of 4 stars
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“The Kidnapping of Senator Andy Thompson” by Celine Rose Mariotti is a short novel that examines politics, the relationships between politicians, and some criminal behaviour. Mariotti has written poetry, novels, and children's literature. She was first published in 1991, and has her works published in magazines in several countries.
“The Kidnapping of Senator Andy Thompson” is the first in the “Adventures on Capitol Hill” series and is set in the United States in September 2006. There are international issues that are causing tension between the Senate and President Kirk Robinson, in particular the possibility of sending American troops to Botswana and Mozambique. Senator Andy Thompson and his friend, Senator Hunt Wagner, figure out that this is being pushed by the State Department and are involved in trying to stop the potential mission through Senate resolutions and politics. During these events Senator Thompson gets kidnapped, and his fellow senators try to get him back while trying to form a massive health care bill. Soon after this President Robinson has a heart attack, making the political situation even more murky.
Mariotti has obviously given a lot of thought to some of the political issues that the senators deal with, particularly in area of health care. She has senators present arguments for and against different forms of health care, discuss women's health care issues, and mental health. While the novel deals with the politics involved in such issues in too simple a manner (for example, the different pressures insurance companies and large pharmaceuticals, among others, would present is ignored) there is a lot of anecdotal information given to try and strengthen arguments made.
The area where the novel is weakest has to do with the kidnapping of Senator Thompson itself. This just might have been the most incompetent kidnapping I've ever read about. Although this is a major felony, in the novel it has mostly been left to the Senators to deal with, as opposed to the FBI and the police. This seems particularly odd given that the kidnapping was witnessed by a policeman, and he identified Brian Travors, the assistant to the Secretary of State, as one of the men involved. The immediate action taken was for the Senators to call a hearing. I would have thought that the immediate reaction would have been for the police to arrest Brian Travors and ask him some pointed questions in a cold room. I couldn't really understand why someone with Travors' position would have hands-on involvement in a kidnapping, even if he was helping to plan one. Why Travors would phone someone he's planning on kidnapping right before the attempt and ask him to meet, alone, is also beyond me. With police access to phone records, how would Travors expect to get away with this?
The novel also didn't make clear what the point of the kidnapping was. Yes, Senator Thompson had put forth a resolution against sending troops, but kidnapping him would only make that more likely to pass if the connection was made. The kidnappers never actually made any demands, so what they wanted can only be inferred. It's difficult to see how kidnapping a Senator would make a resolution like this stop. A much more likely scenario for someone trying to stop a resolution like this would have been to put political pressure on them in some way. This kind of physical violence would actually be counterproductive and much more likely to end in jail time.
The inability of President Robinson to just put the brakes on sending troops to Africa is also puzzling. I had the idea that the President told the cabinet what to do, he doesn't just watch them act and then complain about it. Why this idea was so important to the Secretary of State in the first place is also not explained in this novel; it's possible that is forthcoming in a later book.
In the end though there seems to be some confusion as to what the novel should be. It isn't really a political thriller because there isn't enough action for that. The vast majority of the book is spent in conversations about the different political issues and in fleshing out the various assortment of senators. This is fine, but then it would have helped if the issues were given more than anecdotal arguments. If the passage of the bill is the real story, the novel needed more solid evidence for positions, and a further exploration of the politics involved in trying to make a bill like this happen. That would have made the book even more interesting. If it's supposed to be more of an action thriller, there has to be a lot more action. I rate “The Kidnapping of Senator Andy Thompson” 2 out of 4 stars.
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"Adventures on Capitol Hill-The Kidnapping of Senator Andy Thompson"
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