While this is a very intriguing, and suspenseful novel, Presidential Migraines falls short on the development of the characters, and for me, this is the most important part of a novel. It's as if Fritz Strobl has gone to the Danielle Steele school of writing, great plotting, lots of interesting details allowing the reader to learn from an expert, and flawless execution overall, yet I didn't feel much for the characters.
There was so much to like about the novel, but the author needs to give his characters some flaws, and make a few of them fatal. Readers can't identify with perfection. The two leads, Dr. Stevens, and Dana LaFontaine, are so bright and shiny with goodness and perfection, that they're hard to see. It's the shadows we carry that allow people to see us as we truly are, and these two characters don't have a single flaw between them. Fritz Strobl needs to reread Gone With The Wind and see how selfish Scarlett is to get a taste of what I'm talking about. Or The Bone Collector, for a truly flawed male lead(he's a quadriplegic). The same goes for the bad guys who are seriously thin, though a tad more interesting than the protagonists.
Back the plot; a presidential election is coming up and a young, charismatic senator of Chinese descent, suddenly takes the lead. Is he as all-American as he seems? Or something far more sinister? The whole novel could have been written from the candidate's point of view which would have brought the reader more into the novel and ratcheted up the suspense to a painful degree.
The author is a neurologist and he certainly knows his subject, though the detail kept bogging me down. I have not been to medical school, but after this novel, I feel as though I might be able to pass a test or two. Maybe a few less facts, and more details given as to what dark pain motivates the characters, especially the presidential candidate, and this novel might have held my interest better.
There are so many places to go when you have a background like Strobl. I'm sure he'll refine his writing as he goes along, since it's such minor tweaking that would put him over the top. One more thing, the name Jack Stevens is so pedestrian, especially considering the author has such a cool name. He should consider exploring a new character, who's delightfully flawed, and give him/her a crazy name like Dean Koontz just did with a character called Crispin, in The Moonlit Mind.
