I don't know offhand if I have read any of Louise Penny's thrillers before, but I think I will definitely read her in the future. I really did drop everything and read this book, I started reading it Monday night and then I was up until 1AM last night finishing it. Nuclear Bombs on US soil is a real page-turner! I will say that within the first twenty pages I was invested in seeing Secretary of State Ellen Adams succeed in her newly confirmed role and then it was the needing to know that she and her best friend and counselor Betsy would not only stop the bombs but also that they would survive.
I greatly enjoyed reading how their friendship enabled them to persevere. Sometimes when you read a thriller, especially a political thriller, there can be so much jargon it can be difficult for someone who doesn't have much bureaucracy experience to keep up, I didn't find that to be the case with this book.
I would love to see this book made into a movie or a mini-series on one of the streaming services. My hope would be if it is, they would actually cast women in their 50/60s for the roles.
If you read the acknowledgments for this book, you learn that the character of Besty is named and has attributes based on Hillary Clinton's lifelong friend Besty Johnson Ebeling and the main character Ellen Adams is based in part on Ellen Tauscher (former Congressional Rep and Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security) another close friend of Hilary Clinton who died in 2019. General Whitehead in this book is named for Louise Penney's husband who died from dementia. So this book is filled with characters based on people Louise and Hillary loved. An unlikely love letter of sorts.
5 stars to a thriller you can't put down that is packed with the beauty of friendships.
