From the beginning I felt that this novel had problems.  But to write the review, I needed to sit down and list the qualities that a good political novel should have (in my opinion.)  

1. If it is set in a democracy, it should have an election (which is the political god of a democracy) and if in some other form of government (monarchy, dictatorship, etc.) it should have a looming changing of the guard.
2. It should have suspense.
3. There should be an issue that gets probed—intelligently and perceptively.
4. The story should have complexity and several moving stories that seem on a collision course.
5. The writer needs to fact check.
6. There needs to be politics, in the sense that factions threaten to undo not only each other but the national well-being.
7. There needs to be a sacrifice made, a death—at least a metaphorical death.
8. There needs to be an arc to the story—even if it is an unpleasant one for the readers.
9. There should be a satisfying ending—not in the sense that the novel ends how the reader wants it to end, but in the sense that the literary work doesn’t feel suddenly aborted when the book comes to an end—no abandonment of the literary craft before the book concludes.
10. Heroes and villains should emerge and morph as the story goes along, and the mains characters should be complicated—each one partly appealing and partly disgusting.
11. Violence should be outsourced rather than executed by politicians themselves. 
12. A good political novel doesn’t need to import fantasy, science fiction, or erotica to pump it up.
13. The reader should be spared (for the most part) the normal platitudes, profanities, and parroting that infest political discourse—give us some insight into politics without making us wade through all the garbage to get there.

Overall, The Boomerang is not a satisfying political novel.  It held my attention, provided a nice distraction for me, and kept me wondering how the plot would end.  But the characters were shallow, the politics was missing, and the novel as a whole failed on most of the qualities I just listed.  

The framework of the novel is cancer:  the president has it and the daughter of his chief of staff has it—terminal in both cases.  And the Defense Department has stumbled across a cure for cancer—but decides to bury it in order to protect the oncology and pharmaceutical industries—both of which depend (economically) on people not being cured. Anyone who knows about the cure is hunted down by the Defense Department and murdered. 

This is a real issue.  People invent technology and cures all the time.  I live in Urbana, IL, the location of a world class university.  Several researchers here start their own businesses, invent things, get them patented, then sell the patents to corporations, and sign NDAs. It is not unusual for the corporations to then bury the patent if the new invention will undercut their profit margins.  Money rules.  

But in the novel, this issue is only handled superficially.  It is presented in a way that lacks credibility.  And it is never thoroughly probed, even though this novel would be an ideal place for that kind of airing.

This novel also plays loose with the facts.  Granted—so does the current non-fiction President of the United States.  And just as the dismissal of facts makes it hard to take anything he says seriously, so it makes it hard to take the writer of this novel seriously.  Little things—but little things (like toxic bacteria in your body) can bring down a whole story.  For example, the writer notifies us that no president has ever died of cancer while in office—except Ulysses Grant.  Grant died from cancer—but not while in office and not in 1877.  He left office in 1877, made a short run for president in 1880—before losing the Republican nomination to James Garfield, and then lived until 1885.  Later in the novel, it is stated that no president ever died from cancer—except Grant.  But Herbert Hoover also died of cancer in 1964.  The novel implies that the reason Jimmy Carter did not die of his cancer is that there was a secret cure that only he had access to some secret drug.  Carter was diagnosed with melanoma when he was 91—that had spread to his liver and brain.  By this time, Carter had been out of office for decades.  He was cured of the cancer.  But it was not with a “classified” drug.  Carter received immunotherapy—a procedure that is available to the public.

On several occasions, the writer also states that the president stood in the oval office and looked out over Pennsylvania Avenue.  That is not possible.  Pennsylvania Avenue runs along the north side of the White House.  The Oval Office is located on the south side of the White House and looks out upon the south lawn—not Pennsylvania Avenue.  This may seem like a little thing—but a good novelist isn’t careless with details such as this.  

Some of the characters in the novel are complex, but still shallow.  The dialogue is weak—full of platitudes.  And even though people often talk like this—on the written page such speech becomes tedious.  

There is little politics in this novel—in the sense that a major decision is on the line—and the levers of politics are being used to influence the outcome.  Instead of the levers of politics, this novel turns politicians into Rambo and they fight it out with machine guns, Black Hawk and Apache helicopters, and Pepsi 18-wheelers filled with explosives.  Kind of cheap writing.

And the end of the novel pulls a few surprises—then doesn’t tell you how they happened.  Dead people reappear in the last few pages—with no explanation.  This writer shouldn’t be writing books.  I don’t know what else he could do for a living—but I hear there are a few positions open in the president’s cabinet.  He would fit right in.