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    The Independent review – Jodie Turner-Smith and Brian Cox chase political scandal

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    ReviewThe Independent review – Jodie Turner-Smith and Brian Cox chase political scandalTurner-Smith and Cox team up as journalists investigating a presidential candidate. But there is none of the insider authenticity of director Amy Rice’s earlier Obama documentaryFilm-maker Amy Rice spent two years on the campaign trail with Barack Obama to make a 2009 fly-on-the wall documentary. So it’s massively disappointing that her new fictional political thriller is so insipid and unsatisfying, and completely lacks any kind of authentic insider knowledge of Machiavellian political skullduggery. It’s as generic as they come, though British actor Jodie Turner-Smith is brilliant as a rookie reporter for the fictional Washington Chronicle who uncovers a scandal with the potential to blow open the presidential race.Turner-Smith’s character, Eli James, is increasingly frustrated at having to write clickbait lifestyle articles such as “college dorm must-haves”. But when she uncovers a lottery scandal, she teams up with the paper’s Pulitzer-winning columnist Nicholas Booker (Brian Cox, giving a lefty-intelligentsia version of his alpha-ego male in Succession). Their relationship is nicely played, especially by Turner-Smith, who makes Eli a satisfyingly complicated woman: super smart and competitive, a bit reckless and most of all determined – as she’s had to be as a woman of colour in a largely male, mostly white world.The lottery scandal is linked to political funding and seems to lead right to the Republican presidential candidate Patricia Turnbull (Ann Dowd, channelling Matilda’s Mrs Trunchbull). She’s neck and neck with the Democratic incumbent; then an independent enters the fray. This is mega-celebrity Olympic gold medallist Nate Sterling (ex-WWE wrestler John Cena): he’s promising to take action on climate change, and has the right kind of lantern-jawed all-American jock appeal for rightwingers. Eli’s boyfriend Lucas (Luke Kirby) is a speechwriter for Sterling – who may be too good to be true.There’s a twist at the end that is anticlimactic and uninteresting, and the script is unforgivably clumsy in places. Twice, characters obtain vital information illicitly from computers left unlocked by individuals with a lot to hide. Cox’s veteran journalist is famous for eating his steaks cooked bloody – not just rare. But really this film could be juicier.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTopicsFilmThrillersUS politicsNewspapersBrian CoxreviewsReuse this content More

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      Bill Clinton: ‘I always wanted to be a writer, but doubted my ability to do it’

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      The book I am currently readingThe End of Everything by Katie Mack. The theoretical physicist explains the five most likely endings for our expanding universe, hopefully an unimaginably long time from now. It’s witty, clear and upbeat. A good companion to Brian Greene’s Until the End of Time. I’m also reading Minds Wide Shut by Gary Saul Morson and Morton O Schapiro, a sweeping study of the rise of rigid certainty in politics, economics and literature, and the threat it presents to democracy, which requires open-mindedness and compromise.The book that changed my lifeThe Denial of Death by Ernest Becker. It made me rethink the roots of our deepest fears and insecurities, and why we often disappoint ourselves in how we manifest them.The book I wish I’d writtenOne Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez. I still believe it’s the greatest novel written since William Faulkner died.Read John Grisham’s Sooley, you’ll want to cry tooThe book that had the greatest influence on my writingI always wanted to be a writer, but doubted my ability to do it. From my senior year in college to my first year in law school, I read five books that made me think it was worth a try: North Toward Home by Willie Morris; The Confessions of Nat Turner by William Styron; You Can’t Go Home Again by Thomas Wolfe; The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin; and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou.The book that changed my mindThat’s a great question. I think Isabel Wilkerson’s Caste and Adam Grant’s Think Again forced me to rethink how deeply embedded our unexamined preconceptions are, not just in relation to race, gender, class and religion, but to any number of categories that lead us to see others as inferior, less worthy of being seen and heard. I like Nelson Mandela’s way of restorative reconciliation and inclusion better.The last book that made me crySooley by John Grisham. Read it, you’ll want to cry too.The last book that made me laughJanet Evanovich’s latest book. Stephanie Plum always makes me laugh.The book I’m ashamed not to have readUlysses. I love Irish poetry, prose and nonfiction. I love Joyce. But I always give out and give up before I get through it. I’ll keep trying.The books I give as giftsMeditations by Marcus Aurelius; The Cure at Troy by Seamus Heaney; and The Social Conquest of Earth by EO Wilson. In different ways, each is full of wisdom.The book I’d most like to be remembered forSo far My Life, for the reasons Larry McMurtry stated in his review: it’s a story of my life and times; an account of what it’s like to be president when so much is happening at once, with fuller explanations of events such as Black Hawk Down that you won’t see anywhere else; and a testament of what I believe and why.My comfort readI find comfort in thrillers with interesting characters and good stories. I really liked Stacey Abrams’s While Justice Sleeps, and all of Louise Penny’s Gamache books, Sara Paretsky’s VI Warshawski books, Walter Mosley’s Easy Rawlins books, James Lee Burke’s Dave Robicheaux series, and Michael Connelly’s Bosch books. I love Daniel Silva’s Gabriel Allon, and David Baldacci and Lee Child are still getting better. And I love my co-author James Patterson’s books, especially those with Michael Bennett and Alex Cross. I hope our new book, The President’s Daughter, makes other people’s lists. I like the characters and the story.The book I think is most underratedProbably Ron Chernow’s Grant. He makes an irrefutable case not just for Grant’s genius as a military leader, but for his courage and determination to ensure that the American civil war was not fought in vain. With the latest efforts to discredit the 2020 election, pass voter suppression measures, and kill the January 6 commission, and the changing composition of the supreme court, we are reminded of what Grant knew: the risks of making our union more perfect includes the possibility that the inevitable reaction can rob us of our democracy altogether. More

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      Stacey Abrams: Georgia's political heroine … and romance author

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      Stacey Abrams is the former Georgia state house minority leader, whose fierce fight for Georgians’ right to vote has been credited for potentially handing the state to the Democrats for the first time in 28 years. But Abrams has another identity: the novelist Selena Montgomery, a romance and thriller writer who has sold more than 100,000 copies of her eight novels.Abrams wrote her first novel during her third year at Yale Law School, inspired after reading her ex-boyfriend’s PhD dissertation in chemical physics. She had wanted to write a spy novel: “For me, for other young black girls, I wanted to write books that showed them to be as adventurous and attractive as any white woman,” she wrote in her memoir Minority Leader. But after being told repeatedly by editors that women don’t read spy novels, and that men don’t read spy novels by women, she made her spies fall in love. Rules of Engagement, her debut, was published in 2001, and sees temperatures flare as covert operative Raleigh partners with the handsome Adam Grayson to infiltrate a terrorist group that has stolen deadly environmental technology.Abrams published the novel under a pen name “to separate my fiction from more academic publications on tax policy”. Seven more novels would follow, including Never Tell, which sees criminal psychologist Dr Erin Abbott take on a New Orleans serial killer with the help of journalist Gabriel Moss; Hidden Sins, which follows Mara Reed as she reunites with the scientist whose heart she once broke in her hometown; and Reckless, in which top lawyer Kell Jameson faces her past when the head of her childhood orphanage is accused of murder.In 2018, when Abrams made an unsuccessful bid to become governor of Georgia, she told Entertainment Weekly that she believed she could tell her characters stories “in ways that are engaging, but are also reflective of the complexity of women’s lives”.“Whether I’m writing about an ethno-botanist or a woman who’s raising orphans in South Georgia, the challenge of telling their stories is the same challenge I face as a legislator who has to talk to someone about passing a bill on kinship care, helping grandparents raising grandchildren, or blocking a tax bill because I’m using expertise they don’t realise I have,” she said. “I revel in having been able to be a part of a genre that is read by millions and millions of women, in part because it respects who they are. It respects the diversity of our experiences, and it creates space for broader conversations.”With Biden narrowly ahead in the Georgia recount, readers are now rushing to snap up Abrams’ books. US romance bookshop the Ripped Bodice sold 100 copies of her novels in just 12 hours. And as they pointed out on Twitter, “while [Abrams] was busy turning Georgia blue, she also wrote a new suspense novel”. While Justice Sleeps, out next May, follows a young law clerk, Avery Keene, who works for the legendary but cantankerous Justice Wynn. When Wynn slips into a coma, Avery discovers a conspiracy that has infiltrated the heart of US politics.“A decade ago, I wrote the first draft of a novel that explored an intriguing aspect of American democracy – the lifetime appointments to the US supreme court,” Abrams said in a statement. “Drawing on my own background as a lawyer and politician, While Justice Sleeps weaves between the supreme court, the White House and international intrigue to see what happens when a lowly law clerk controls the fate of a nation.”Abrams’ fellow romance writers, meanwhile, have launched an auction and fundraiser at Romancing the Runoff to help support the Georgia senate run-offs. “We’re here to help give 2020 a happily ever after,” they say. And they’ve already made $60,000 (£46,400). More