I picked up this book because I had tried to write a novel about a female Secret Service agent when I was younger, and thought this book might give me some good inspiration.

“Within Arm’s Length” by Dan Emmett is actually an expansion on his older book by the same name originally published in 2012. The new publication (2014) includes most of the same stories from the original work, but with a few added stories and expansions to existing stories. Oddly, this may not have been a good thing. Rather than adding new insight into the life of a secret service agent, the added descriptions bog down the story and make it overly nitpicky when the original telling was likely more “punchy” and fast-paced. In some cases, I had to labor through the heavy descriptions and overly flowery language to find the action when sometimes the action I was looking for wasn’t there at all. In fact, most of the added descriptions were so tedious, I was bored at best, and frustrated at worst. I also noticed a few occasions where the same story was told twice in slightly different ways, but with many of the same phrases. This was probably an artifact of the rewrite, but seemed careless and unprofessional. Overall, the writing was mediocre.

I was also annoyed at how Emmett preached that one of the values of the Secret Service was being apolitical, but repeatedly degraded the staff of the Clinton presidency. This was not overt, but Emmett’s personal politics were evident through the words he chose when talking about Clinton and his staff. Illogical, idiotic, naïve, inexperienced, stupid, young staffers needing to be put in their place, etc. This language was so derogatory and demeaning, it was hard to read around at times. As I said, Emmett did not outright reveal himself to be either Republican or Democratic, but it probably would have been better if he had to just get it out of the way. The worst part is, I don’t believe Emmett was consciously trying to be as rude as he was – it was just a reflection of how he truly thinks. If this book had been truly apolitical and dropped all the cumbersome and unnecessary description, it could have been okay.

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Created Oct 07, 2019 at 7:35pm • Submit your own review...