Executive Privilege is what some would call an airport novel or, a little less kind, a potboiler. Before you take that as a criticism, let me comment that there is a important need for potboilers. Man can not live on Pynchon alone. Sometime we need to escape into a world where good and bad is tightly defined, the sex is sleazy, and everything is wrapped up in a neat if ridiculously implausible package.Phillip Margolin writes really good airport novels. While Thomas Pynchon need not worry about his reputation, John Grisham is looking over his shoulder nervously. Margolin loves his convoluted plots, his intrepid lawmen and lawyers out for the good fight, and his slimy power-grabbers. Certainly a horny president with female corpses littering his road to the top is right up Margolin's alley...the kind of alley that has Deep Throat hiding behind a dumpster.
I really liked this novel. It did exactly what I wanted it to do. It gave me a few hours of escapism into a world where the good guy triumphs and the bad guy is caught...if only until the next potboiler. If this is what you want. Margolin is your man.
