Yes, he can: Obama debuts as Sherlock Holmesian detective – By Alison Flood (theguardian.com) / July 12 2018
Along with Watsonian sidekick Joe Biden, the former president has embarked on a crimefighting career in Hope Never Dies by Andrew Shaffer
Pennsylvania Avenue Irregulars … the cover art for Hope Never Dies by Andrew Shaffer. Illustration: Jeremy Enecio
Step aside Holmes and Watson; back off Poirot and Hastings. A new pair of amateur sleuths are hitting town this month: Barack Obama and Joe Biden.
Andrew Shaffer’s Hope Never Dies opens as Biden, his narrator, mopes around the house shortly after the 2016 presidential election. Obama is “on the vacation to end all vacations”, and his former vice president is scrolling through old text messages they sent each other, feeling left behind as he watches paparazzi videos of the 44th president kayaking with Justin Trudeau and base jumping with Bradley Cooper. Then, in a satisfyingly noirish scene, he hears “flint striking metal”, and sees “a slim figure in his black hand-tailored suit” in the trees:
“His white dress shirt was unbuttoned at the neck. He took a long drag off his cigarette and exhaled smoke with leisure. Barack Obama was never in a hurry.”
The novel, just out from Quirk Books, sees the duo digging in to the mystery behind the death of Biden’s favourite Amtrak conductor, and the sinister forces driving the opioid epidemic. Publisher Jason Rekulak says it will see them searching crime scenes, infiltrating a notorious biker gang and even, in Biden’s case, surviving being thrown out of a speeding train.
“It’s a tiny bit ridiculous,” Rekulak admitted. “But is it any more ridiculous than the real-life political events of the past year? Or the real-life newspaper headlines of the past week? Given a choice between the insane fantasies of Hope Never Dies or the insane realities of Washington DC in 2018, I know how I’m casting my ballot.”
Shaffer said he came up with the idea the first time he saw Biden in a pair of aviator shades. “I wondered what was going on in his head. What if he was narrating a thriller, starring himself and the president?” he said. “When the Obama/Biden bromance memes went around the internet last year, I dusted off the idea and started writing Hope Never Dies.”
It wasn’t hard, according to Shaffer, to turn the White House double act into a detective duo. “It was fairly easy to imagine Obama and Biden as a pair of amateur sleuths in the mode of the Baker Street detective duo. The knock against Obama was always that he was too smart for his own good at times, while Biden was more ‘street smart’ – a blue-collar man of the people. Holmes and Watson, basically,” he said. “The reality is a bit more complicated, of course. Biden is actually a wonk at heart. Despite his gaffes, he’s very cerebral. In the book, though, I tried not to stray too far from the Obama and Biden we saw on TV for eight years.”
So far, reviews have been “mostly positive”, according to Shaffer: Publishers Weekly called it “entertaining [and] offbeat”, while Kirkus Reviews found that “the cool, cerebral ex-Potus is a reasonable stand-in for Sherlock Holmes, and his ex-VPotus, by turns appealingly modest and laughably self-satisfied, is in some ways a better Watson than the good doctor himself”. The review added: “The nicest touch here is the failure of a single character to mention the name of Obama’s successor.”
Shaffer, now planning a second title in the series that will take place in Chicago, said: “Some readers have said it’s too outlandish … while others have said it’s not outlandish enough. President Obama’s job approval rating in office topped out at around 60%, so as long as I’ve got at least a three-star average, I figure I’m good.”
Obama’s sleuthing debut is not his first appearance in fiction: he’s also exchanged a fist-bump with Spider-Man, and appeared as the loincloth-clad “Barack the Barbarian” in a comic series.
Obama and Biden have yet to comment on their new venture.
