Reading Richard Rohmer

Okay.  Done.

A couple of things in no particular order.

Rohmer and Jewish people.  If you're a Jewish character in a Richard Rohmer novel, it's going to come up a lot.  Like every time you're mentioned.  Like some kind of Homeric device.  There's a great Jimmy Breslin character in The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight, whose introduction is something like:

Beppo the Dwarf, so called because he was a dwarf.

But Breslin is kidding.  Rohmer's Jewish President is so Jewish he's Jewish.  ("As you know, I'm not Orthodox...") But at least he's a half-decent guy.  Unlike Weinstein, the Senator from New York, who blows cigar smoke in people's faces and bribes and blackmails them whilst calling them "baby."

It might not be so bad, if other characters had more character, but as it is, it's sort of... what's the word I'm looking for ... uncomfortable?

The scenes in the Oval Office continue to be the most howlingly awful and wooden.  Other sections are dull, but only when Presidents are involved does Rohmerworld sound completely like it's being imagined by a visitor to the planet who speaks no known Earth language.

Canadian-U.S. relations.  There doesn't seem to be any left-over animosity from Canada killing all those troops at the airport.  200?  Or maybe that's why Congress votes the way it does.

The President's announcement that he won't tell anyone how he's going to vote. Because why?  Just because.  Not unlike the Prime Minister in Ultimatum.  This is inexcusably lame.

Stan's point, that it would be awfully difficult for the President of France to sneak up on a summit meeting, goes double for the ambassador from Saudi Arabia bursting into the Oval Office.

I still like Rohmer though.  And there are a couple of paragraphs in Exxoneration that sort of resemble an actual thriller, or at least a melodrama, or, okay, just a story.  As opposed to an idea, "what if GM tried to corner the banana market," stretched out over a number of meetings where people explain the idea to each other, with the only suspense provided by one character -- for no reason at all -- announcing that he won't tell you what he thinks of the idea until later.

On to Periscope Red?  That's the next book in the Omnibus.  Or is Exodus UK the next in series?