I noticed an interesting phenomena recently when I went to review a couple books on Amazon, as I often do. I review books I bought from Amazon, but also library books and books from other sources.

Daniel Silva has this wonderful series of books starring Gabriel Allon, the Israeli spy.

The latest book is the Cellist.

If you haven’t read it yet and plan to, don’t read this. The book builds to a takedown of Donald Trump as a villain who is every bit as evil as the worst Russian or Islamic Terrorist.

Now opinions on politics are all about the eye of the beholder. But I do think it is dangerous territory for

Silva to jump so out in front on this one. As I read some reviews of the book on Amazon, I found the kind of polarization that exists in the country today.

I thought I would enter my cautionary review only to find an Amazon note saying unusual activity has led them to block any reviews that aren’t Amazon purchase verified.

Ok.

Then I read The President’s Daughter by Bill Clinton and Patterson. I quit paying money for Patterson books a while back. He co-authors one that feels like it comes out every few days. Some of them are horrific, and sometimes they range from not to bad to pretty good.

So I read this one from the library.

I was shocked. It was really good. I mean if it were written by a name you never heard before I would praise it for being so well done.

I won’t get into plot detail beyond the title but the story goes counter to what you would might fear. The president, ex president, political parties, political characters, none of them are recognizable, some are against type to the point you wouldn’t believe Bill Clinton signed off.

And the book itself has Patterson using his fast paced writing skills.

Anyway, I went to Amazon to praise the hell out of this book and ooops, because of unusual activity no outside reviewers.

It’s Amazon’s site to do what they want, but it is a shame the culture wars have gotten to the point where they have to

limit review input.