Emergency Powers (Imogen Trager #3) by James McCrone-Review, Guest Post & Giveaway

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ABOUT THE BOOK: Release Date October 1, 2020

The accidental president is no accident.
The investigation that was FBI Agent Imogen Trager’s undoing may be the key to stopping a brutal, false flag terrorist attack meant to tighten a puppet president’s grip on power.

Imogen Trager is haunted—and sidelined—by a case she couldn’t solve. When the president dies in office, she knows that the conspiracy she chased down a blind alley still has life in it—and she needs to get back in the hunt.

As bodies pile up and leads go cold, the main target from that old case reaches out to her. He’s still at large, and now he needs protection. Imogen doesn’t trust him, and it’s not only because he’s offering intel that sounds too good to be true. He’s already tried to kill her once.

Emergency Powers feels ripped-from-the-headlines: a fractious FBI, an undermined Attorney General, powerful people exploiting the rule of law for their own gain, and using all manner of treachery to maintain their hold on power. But it’s more than headlines about things people think they know. And darker.

Set variously in DC, Seattle and small-town America, Emergency Powers is a story of corruption and redemption, achieved at enormous personal cost.

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REVIEW:EMERGENCY POWERS is the third instalment in James McCrone’s contemporary, adult IMOGEN TRAGER political, suspense thriller series focusing on FBI Agent Imogen ‘Gen’ Trager and the investigation into the electoral process of the United States of America. EMERGENCY POWERS can be read as a stand alone but for back story, history and cohesion I recommend reading the series in order.

SOME BACKGROUND: Following the fictional 2016 US Presidential election wherein Diane Redmond is elected the first female president of the United States with an Electoral College difference of only four votes 271- 267, a series of anomalies including the ‘accidental’ deaths of seven electors sends up red flags that cannot be ignored, catching the attention of some powerful people including FBI Agent Imogen Trager, who begins an investigation of her own into the who, how and why.

Told from numerous third person perspectives EMERGENCY POWERS follows in the aftermath of the suspicious ‘death’ of American President Diane Redmond, and the quick turnaround of the people in charge. Something is wrong in Washington DC, and FBI Agent Imogen Trager, along with her team of agents and investigators, begin to piece together a conspiracy that implicates some of the most powerful men in and out of US politics.

From corruption and betrayal, secrets and lies, murder for hire, bio-terrorism and a puppet government EMERGENCY POWERS is a thought provoking story of what if-what if the all of the political power was controlled by the powerful elite, and with that control came the unquestionable influence over everyone in charge? When the legitimate power is controlled by the coercive power, everything and everyone is forced to follow the lead.

James McCrone pulls the reader into another thrilling and suspense filled roller coaster of political intrigue where the fine line between fiction and reality is blurred by the similarities of today’s current headlines.

Reading Order and Previous Reviews
Faithless Elector
Dark Network

Copy supplied for review

Reviewed by Sandy

Isolation and Conflict – by James McCrone

I’ve been thinking about isolation recently. Can’t imagine why.

And I was struck by a theme in my thrillers, one I hadn’t necessarily intended, but which is there nevertheless. That of isolation.

In my thrillers, the asymmetry of information—and the danger of sharing what you know—is the core of the tension, and suspense. Fear isolates the characters. They think they know why things are happening, but they struggle to find out how, and who is doing it.

The idea leapt out at me while I was writing the screenplays for Faithless Elector and Dark Network. A good friend who has worked as a screenwriter agreed to look at the first part of an early draft (he’d read the books) and give feedback. After noting that my screenplay, ironically, was perhaps being too faithful to a novel called Faithless, he pointed out that there was too much that was interior. Thought processes that work on the page to ratchet up tension and advance the plot don’t work on screen.

He suggested adding in a friend—maybe someone the character confides in? Or someone with whom he has playful banter, or a friendly antagonism? My friend’s broad suggestion was very helpful for the scenes I showed him, for which I’m very grateful. But I found it difficult to apply his advice more broadly. The characters’ isolation was the key, and I needed to portray that isolation while conveying information

I’m still working on the screenplays, not least because as an exercise (which is probably all the scripts will ever be) it forces me to look and think differently about what and how I write. It’s helped me become a better writer. Because as I (re)examined those works it became clear that each of the characters’ isolation, their solitude, was the point. Where do they turn? Whom can they trust?

As I began writing Emergency Powers, the book which debuts today, I wanted to use that sense of isolation—more consciously, and in a slightly different way. Recently, much has been said and written about the “us-versus-them” mindset in policing, itself a form of self-inflicted isolation. I wanted to turn that inside out.

FBI Agent Imogen Trager, and her friend Special Agent Amanda Vega can’t trust their own colleagues. For them, it’s not the Bureau v. the world, but factions within the Bureau that can’t be trusted. And for Imogen and Amanda the stakes are life and death. I wanted to explore, through Imogen, what kind of bravery it takes to stand outside, against the crowd.

The award winning writer Art Taylor, the author, most recently of The Boy Detective & The Summer of ’74 noted that Emergency Powers paints “keen portraits of true patriotism, and the courage that drives it.” My three strong female characters aren’t just standing in opposition to the conspirators, they’re having to do so while watching their backs even within the Bureau. It’s intricate work, like trying to glean clues from a bomb after it’s exploded—and it may be that one of their colleagues set the bomb in the first place. There’s worse to come, too.

The grey eminence in the story, known only as “the Postman,” does not suffer from the same kind of low information as Imogen and Amanda. But even before they know the name of the head conspirator, they begin to figure out how to isolate him.

Perhaps into a jail cell.

Follow James: Website / Twitter /Facebook / Goodreads

James McCrone is the author of the Imogen Trager series—Faithless Elector (2016), Dark Network (2017), and Emergency Powers (Oct. 1, 2020)—“taut” and “gripping” political thrillers about a stolen presidency. His short story “Numbers Don’t Lie” was also included in the anthology Low Down Dirty Vote, vol. 2, published this summer.

He’s a member of the The Mystery Writers of America, Int’l Assoc. of Crime writers, International Thriller Writers, Independent Book Publishers Assoc., Philadelphia Dramatists Center and Sisters in Crime network. James has an MFA from the University of Washington in Seattle. A Northwest native, James now lives in Philadelphia, with his wife and three children.

You can learn more at http://jamesmccrone.com/

James McCrone is graciously offering a paper copy of  EMERGENCY POWERS  to ONE (1) lucky commenter at The Reading Cafe.

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8. Giveaway open to USA and CANADA only

9. Giveaway runs from October 1-6, 2020