Brad Meltzer’s The President’s Shadow is This Summer’s The Da Vinci Code

The phenomenal success of books like The Da Vinci Code proves that readers everywhere love seeing events, people, and concepts we read about in school brought to thrilling life and connected to our modern day. Brad Meltzer’s Culper Ring series has the same bones as The Da Vinci Code—riddles and conspiracies hidden in plain sight, a love of history, and a wildly re-imagined backstory to some of the world’s most famous items and events. But Meltzer brings a level of sophistication to his Culper Ring series that enhances their impact and makes for novels that satisfy as thrillers, as conspiracy tales, and as character studies. Meltzer continues his winning streak with The President’s Shadow, the third in his Culper Ring series about an ancient organization founded by George Washington to protect the presidency—and once again he finds the perfect balance between historic puzzles, tense thriller setpieces, and surprising character interactions.

The History is Solid
Meltzer does his research and writes historical thrillers that are rooted in reality. The Culper Ring that Meltzer’s hero archivist Beecher White is a member of really did exist, and really was founded by George Washington, and many of the events and objects that factor into the story are similarly real or based on reality. This is important because Meltzer doesn’t hold back on his plotting—The President’s Shadow involves severed arms, a top-secret military experiment, a secret guild of assassins founded by none other than John Wilkes Booth, and the return of Nico, the insane man who believes it’s his destiny to be the fifth successful presidential assassin in American history. The rock-solid, fact-checkable foundation anchors a plot that seems poised to boil over into chaos at any time.
The Human Touch
While The President’s Shadow can be read cold without having read the first two books, it definitely helps if you understand the history between these characters. That’s because, unlike in historical thrillers that focus too much on the puzzles and historical details to the detriment of the characters, Meltzer offers us flesh-and-blood people who have emotional reactions to events and each other, who lie and betray each other, and who stand up for each other. Beecher White’s semi-antagonistic relationship with President Orson Wallace is a great example: White suspects Wallace of a terrible crime committed in his youth, but he also saved Wallace’s life, and the mutual distrust between the leader of the free world and a man dedicated to protecting the office, if not the individual, gives the story a powerful sense of depth.
The Pacing is Spot-On
Where a lot of historical thrillers in the vein of The Da Vinci Code rocket along a story that simply pushes the protagonists from discovery to discovery, Meltzer is more patient. The President’s Shadow opens with a stunning image: the First Lady of the United States, engaged in some therapeutic gardening on the White House grounds, discovers a severed arm clutching a totem that links directly to her husbands semi-nemesis Beecher White—but then Meltzer takes his time unveiling the rest of the story, giving us the history of Beecher’s father and his mysterious death (somehow linked to the severed arm) and of several other characters, each pursuing, it seems, a separate thread.
Masterful Misdirection
One of Meltzer’s great talents is lulling the reader into a false sense of security and comprehension. As you read The President’s Shadow there are several moments during which the solution to the riddles seem obvious—but as you soon realize, you’re being set up. The true solution to the mystery of the buried arms, the true motivation of every player, and the identity of the ultimate antagonist are surprising—but delightful, because they fit perfectly with the clues, just not in the way you may have expected. When twists comes out of nowhere, they’re frustrating. When they are supported by evidence in the story, they’re thrilling.
The Final Reveal
Without giving anything away, you’ll want to read to the last page of The President’s Shadow for the final twist that puts a wholly different spin on the rest of the book. It’s not a cheap surprise; it’s something that bubbles under all of the Culper Ring novels. It’s pretty shocking, and it’s also pretty genius. While other historical thrillers keep their thrills and puzzles securely in the past, Meltzer does them all one better, realizing that all conspiracies and puzzles have to be created in the present before they can become history.
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