As a true nod to creative possibilities in fiction, an unlikely team consisting of former president Bill Clinton and accomplished best-selling writer James Patterson have jointly leveraged their expertise to stitch together a fresh narrative world on the intersection between political fantasy and realism. The premise of “The President is Missing,” unsurprisingly, revolves around political dynamics, uncertainty, and mystery in order to motivate a number of exciting plot elements which bring the reader through a number of locations and expose them to diverse situations. Further, Patterson’s collaboration with Clinton possesses significant bearing on the process of the former’s composition, as Patterson utilized Clinton’s cornucopia of experiences as President - don’t forget the Lewinsky scandal and Clinton’s subsequent impeachment - as a basis for this thriller’s realism and substance. In a twist, some have speculated that the President’s reasons for going rogue and disappearing from his security detail in the novel have parallels to some of Clinton’s own life. These speculations follow from how Patterson’s handling of an early life biography and the motivations for the fictional President of the novel, Jonathan Lincoln Duncan. Read it as a thriller, an ambitious revisionism of Clinton’s actual Presidency, or in any way you want. “The President is Missing,” though seemingly generic in plot, betrays an uncanny realism that distinguishes it from similar books.