By Order of the President: Presidential Agent, Book 1

W.E.B. Griffin does not need me to add anything to his accolades. His well thought out plots, locations, characters, he brings to life are a treat to every adrenaline junkie. This series is one of my favorites. I should point out, i've read this series in a book form years ago. Now I'm still enjoying it on my kindle.

Great new characters. Very interesting plot that really gets you involved. I plan on reading that rest. If they are anything like his other work they'll be great.

Fast moving, yet filled with interesting military information. Good character building and sensible work ethic. Great factual information. Believable action!

A fast moving story covering a vast part of the world and all parts of the military and the government. Our hero and his connections both personal and political allow many corners to be cut in this tale. Well done very involved plot.

I finished reading this great book yesterday (Mon., 10/30/17), but I'm a little puzzled by the front cover's illustration of the choppers flying someplace. Are they in Vietnam, where Charley Castillo's dad was killed as a 19 YO soldier awarded the Medal of Honor posthumously, or are the choppers in Afghanistan with young Castillo at the stick, en-route to rescue some buddies and disobeying orders? I agree w/one of the reviewers who said that the book lays out a considerable number of pages describing Castillo's background as an orphan adopted by and growing up in a wealthy family (can somebody say that "sounds like Oliver Twist"?). Like "Brotherhood of War's" Craig Lowell, Castillo has a black buddy (Major Dick Miller) (Lowell's black pal is Major Phil Parker, for those of you who haven't read Brotherhood of War yet) but unlike Miller, both Castillo and Sandy Felter (the presidential counselor modeled after McGeorge Bundy, counselor to JFK and LBJ) are gifted linguists.I had a similar problem with the cover illustration of "Hazardous Duty." That drawing shows a boat armed to the teeth with machine guns, but that vessel plays no part at all in the story. So why would Mr. Griffin and his editor have the illustration on the front cover? One character in both books, General Allan Naylor, reminds me of stuffed shirt General Robert Bellmon of the "Brotherhood of War" series, while Castillo is another wealthy guy playing at being soldier, like Craig Lowell, Pick Pickering, Cletus Frade, Eric Fulmar and Jim Whittaker. Either they like doing so, or they're trying to evade their families (or because their families suck at loving their children or their families smother their children with too much love).

In this new series Griffin does for contemporary events what he did for military history; gives it a human face. Griffin enters the era of the international terrorist and those men who contestthis new enemy. Now we must grant that his humanity lives at a rather more rarified level, or floor of the hotel, than most of us mere mortals: kind of directors' circle rather than third floor near the elevator. With such wealth also comes skill in language, arts and technical areas. That's ok! Since Homer, heroes have epitomized the apex of their society. Odyssus , Aeneas, Arthur were not common men. There's been a lot of debate about this and while there are moral consequences in an age of democracy, it may be a literary truth that it is hard to plot around the ordinary. Griffin clearly belongs to the 'great man' school of historical fiction. In his WWII series he accomplished the noble task of "Teaching with delight." And with all respect to the Dogfaces and the "Joes" who actually won the war, he made some great stories about high level goings-on and grand strategy. In some ways this poses a problem, for the nature of terrorism is that it can happen so quickly at such a micro scale that such macro responses are helpless to combat its effect. In this new series he promises to do the same. Be forewarned. This is the same Griffin. He repeats his jokes - we might miss them. He waxes eloquent over technical aspects and devices. He treats authority with an easy familiarity mixed with awe which reminds one of the one liner :"Class warefare is impossible here. Americans do not hate the rich, they want to be the rich." Still, just as the Corps Series helped us brush up on historical events, this new series promises to bring us a clearer vision of our world.

I have the full 7 books so far in this series and would recommend it to anyone interested in well written adventure stories

It would be great if a leader could do this for his country. But he is still a great writer to tell a tale this good...

Sent the kindle ebook back for refund. Can't read this thing. Not only, but especially American authors love to include foreign words into their sentences. And they usually don't care if it's correct, the way they do it or not. With most it's bearable, but here the errors are so disturbing the reading flow, that I can't read it. It's not "Frauburgermeister" and "Frauoberst". Where did you get this stupid idea? It's "Frau Bürgermeister" (never mind about the 'ü', "Frau Burgermeister" would be okay, too) and "Frau Oberst". There were plenty of other things like that. If you're not able to do it the right way, just leave those oh so exotic words out - or pay someone knowledegable to proof read. Besides that, there are way too many words where the "'s" (genetive) is separated from the leading word with a space ("Men 's room"). I didn't make a tally sheet, but it felt like almost half of them. I guess here it's more the publisher at fault.The story itself, as far as I could stand reading it, wasn't bad at all.

ExcelentePrimeiro livro deste herói, trata do desaparecimento de um avião! Alguma semelhança com o avião da Malasia? Dá para imaginar como as autoridades do USA ficaram hoje, à semelhança com o relatado no livro.....

Man mag es, oder man mag es nicht.Wie oft ist der Held jung, ein Frauenschwarm und reich. :) Die Geschichte ist interessant, die Fäden kommen angenehm zusammen und der Humor funktioniert, auch wenn er manchmal ein bisschen schwarz ist.