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Q Clearance
When presidential speechwriter Timothy Burnham progresses from president's favorite to intimate advisor with Q clearance, giving him access to atomic energy secrets, he becomes the target of Soviet spies
Hardcover
First published January 1, 1986
About the author
Peter Benchley
65 books1,215 followersPeter Bradford Benchley was an American author best known for writing the novel Jaws and co-writing the screenplay for its highly successful film adaptation. The success of the book led to many publishers commissioning books about mutant rats, rabid dogs and the like threatening communities. The subsequent film directed by Steven Spielberg and co-written by Benchley is generally acknowledged as the first summer blockbuster. Benchley also wrote The Deep and The Island which were also adapted into films.
Benchley was from a literary family. He was the son of author Nathaniel Benchley and grandson of Algonquin Round Table founder Robert Benchley. His younger brother, Nat Benchley, is a writer and actor. Peter Benchley was an alumnus of Phillips Exeter Academy and Harvard University.
After graduating from college, he worked for The Washington Post, then as an editor at Newsweek and a speechwriter in the White House. He developed the idea of a man-eating shark terrorising a community after reading of a fisherman Frank Mundus catching a 4,550 pound great white shark off the coast of Long Island in 1964. He also drew some material from the tragic Jersey Shore shark attacks of 1916.
His reasonably successful second novel, The Deep, is about a honeymooning couple discovering two sunken treasures on the Bermuda reefs—17th century Spanish gold and a fortune in World War Two-era morphine—who are subsequently targeted by a drug syndicate. This 1976 novel is based on Benchley's chance meeting in Bermuda with diver Teddy Tucker while writing a story for National Geographic. Benchley co-wrote the screenplay for the 1977 film release, along with Tracy Keenan Wynn and an uncredited Tom Mankiewicz. Directed by Peter Yates and starring Robert Shaw, Nick Nolte and Jacqueline Bisset, The Deep was the second-highest grossing release of 1977 after Star Wars, although its box office tally fell well short of Jaws.
The Island, published in 1979, was a story of descendants of 17th century pirates who terrorize pleasure craft in the Caribbean, leading to the Bermuda Triangle mystery. Benchley again wrote the screenplay for the film adaptation. But the movie version of The Island, starring Michael Caine and David Warner, failed at the box office when released in 1980.
During the 1980s, Benchley wrote three novels that did not sell as well as his previous works. However, Girl of the Sea of Cortez, a beguiling John Steinbeck-type fable about man's complicated relationship with the sea, was far and away his best reviewed book and has attracted a considerable cult following since its publication. Sea of Cortez signposted Benchley's growing interest in ecological issues and anticipated his future role as an impassioned and intelligent defender of the importance of redressing the current imbalance between human activities and the marine environment. Q Clearance published in 1986 was written from his experience as a staffer in the Johnson White House. Rummies (aka Lush), which appeared in 1989, is a semi-autobiographical work, loosely inspired by the Benchley family's history of alcohol abuse. While the first half of the novel is a relatively straightforward (and harrowing) account of a suburbanite's descent into alcoholic hell, the second part—which takes place at a New Mexico substance abuse clinic—veers off into wildly improbable thriller-type territory.
He returned to nautical themes in 1991's Beast written about a giant squid threatening Bermuda. Beast was brought to the small screen as a made-for-TV movie in 1996, under the slightly altered title The Beast. His next novel, White Shark, was published in 1994. The story of a Nazi-created genetically engineered shark/human hybrid failed to achieve popular or critical success.
Benchley was from a literary family. He was the son of author Nathaniel Benchley and grandson of Algonquin Round Table founder Robert Benchley. His younger brother, Nat Benchley, is a writer and actor. Peter Benchley was an alumnus of Phillips Exeter Academy and Harvard University.
After graduating from college, he worked for The Washington Post, then as an editor at Newsweek and a speechwriter in the White House. He developed the idea of a man-eating shark terrorising a community after reading of a fisherman Frank Mundus catching a 4,550 pound great white shark off the coast of Long Island in 1964. He also drew some material from the tragic Jersey Shore shark attacks of 1916.
His reasonably successful second novel, The Deep, is about a honeymooning couple discovering two sunken treasures on the Bermuda reefs—17th century Spanish gold and a fortune in World War Two-era morphine—who are subsequently targeted by a drug syndicate. This 1976 novel is based on Benchley's chance meeting in Bermuda with diver Teddy Tucker while writing a story for National Geographic. Benchley co-wrote the screenplay for the 1977 film release, along with Tracy Keenan Wynn and an uncredited Tom Mankiewicz. Directed by Peter Yates and starring Robert Shaw, Nick Nolte and Jacqueline Bisset, The Deep was the second-highest grossing release of 1977 after Star Wars, although its box office tally fell well short of Jaws.
The Island, published in 1979, was a story of descendants of 17th century pirates who terrorize pleasure craft in the Caribbean, leading to the Bermuda Triangle mystery. Benchley again wrote the screenplay for the film adaptation. But the movie version of The Island, starring Michael Caine and David Warner, failed at the box office when released in 1980.
During the 1980s, Benchley wrote three novels that did not sell as well as his previous works. However, Girl of the Sea of Cortez, a beguiling John Steinbeck-type fable about man's complicated relationship with the sea, was far and away his best reviewed book and has attracted a considerable cult following since its publication. Sea of Cortez signposted Benchley's growing interest in ecological issues and anticipated his future role as an impassioned and intelligent defender of the importance of redressing the current imbalance between human activities and the marine environment. Q Clearance published in 1986 was written from his experience as a staffer in the Johnson White House. Rummies (aka Lush), which appeared in 1989, is a semi-autobiographical work, loosely inspired by the Benchley family's history of alcohol abuse. While the first half of the novel is a relatively straightforward (and harrowing) account of a suburbanite's descent into alcoholic hell, the second part—which takes place at a New Mexico substance abuse clinic—veers off into wildly improbable thriller-type territory.
He returned to nautical themes in 1991's Beast written about a giant squid threatening Bermuda. Beast was brought to the small screen as a made-for-TV movie in 1996, under the slightly altered title The Beast. His next novel, White Shark, was published in 1994. The story of a Nazi-created genetically engineered shark/human hybrid failed to achieve popular or critical success.
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Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews
March 19, 2013
-Uno de los lados oscuros y humorísticos de “El ala oeste de la Casa Blanca”-.
Género. Novela.
Lo que nos cuenta. Timothy Burnham, redactor de discursos presidenciales, se ve lanzado a la primera línea de consejeros cuando el Presidente de EEUU comienza a fijarse en sus ideas, pero también se fijan en él algunos consejeros presidenciales de envergadura y los que están al otro lado del telón de acero, aunque en un principio lo que más le preocupa a Tim es el fracaso de su matrimonio.
¿Quiere saber más del libro, sin spoilers? Visite:
http://librosdeolethros.blogspot.com/...
Género. Novela.
Lo que nos cuenta. Timothy Burnham, redactor de discursos presidenciales, se ve lanzado a la primera línea de consejeros cuando el Presidente de EEUU comienza a fijarse en sus ideas, pero también se fijan en él algunos consejeros presidenciales de envergadura y los que están al otro lado del telón de acero, aunque en un principio lo que más le preocupa a Tim es el fracaso de su matrimonio.
¿Quiere saber más del libro, sin spoilers? Visite:
http://librosdeolethros.blogspot.com/...
May 15, 2013
A captivating comedy of Executive-branch adventure as a hapless basement-level White-House writer gets wrapped up in the world of secrets, sex and spies. This poor soul is pulled from all sides while he desperately attempts to find himself in this mad-cap novel. I've read it many times over the decades, and it's timeless theme resonates as true today as in the era it was written. Top on my list of comedy classics.
July 7, 2010
Entertaining, but somewhat dated. A lot of "tongue in cheek" humor regarding the inefficiencies and red-tape in government kept me reading, however.
March 3, 2008
Very funny book about classified government documents by the writer of Jaws.
January 29, 2010
One of the funniest spy stories of all time.
April 22, 2023
Pretty good D.C. set story about this low level speechwriter on staff for The White House whose humdrum life gets thrown into unexpected turmoil when the President unexpectedly takes a personal interest in him. The President somehow gets the idea that this particular speechwriter has his specific voice (or at least the no nonsense voice he'd like the public to think he has) down pat and starts wanting this guy to take a run thru on seemingly every speech he's set to give. (This gives the speechwriter access to Q Clearance which means he starts getting an incessant amount of documents all labelled Top Secret--and none of it the least bit decipherable to him because they're all about oil reserves or grain harvesting or wheat rationing--it's all stuff that's well outside his area of expertise, but these top secret documents keep on coming to him whether or not he wants them now because he's been rubber stamped Q Clearance)
While this is at first seen as a boon since it elevates his status a great deal, this also soon becomes all very, very stressful for the speechwriter whom because the President has now taken a personal interest, has made a rather embittered enemy in the President's chief of staff who has no idea whom this lowly speechwriter is nor how this random speechwriter got the ear of the President. This is just one of the things that the speechwriter has to deal with now, he also has to deal almost unknowingly with a Russian asset who enlists his daughter to seduce the speechwriter (the speechwriter is currently staying at the YMCA for his wife now hates his guts for working for the president whom she vehemently opposes on all issues--somehow this wasn't as much of an issue when he was just a speechwriter on staff and didn't have to work with the President one on one as much) after a cleaning woman (also working for the Russian asset) accidentally finds some of the shredded Q Clearance Top Secret documents on grain shortages or whatever and giving the shredded bits to the Russian Asset, the Russian Asset thinks that this speechwriter must be well connected and bursting with Top Secret docs that are worth stealing. (They Are Not to say the least)
This obsession with collecting these seemingly worthless top secret documents is now surprisingly topical thanks to events in the news in the past year where you had stories about Trump having taken classified documents out of the White House with him, followed by stories in which classified documents were found at the home office of Joe Biden from when he was Vice President. Reading this novel honestly kinda helped shed some light on the idea that there might just be too many things labeled Top Secret since surely not everything labeled that needs to be so right? At least that's what our newly minted ace speechwriter soon comes to find out given that he can't make heads or tails of some of these that are given him and that he to diligently shred lest anyone get their hands on it.
Anyways the story soon involves him being seduced and unexpectedly she actually falls for him and comes clean about who she is and what her mission was supposed to be, and he's gotta think of a way not only out of the jam he now finds himself in, but also has to think of a way to save her neck as well from the Russian handlers who are expecting to be fed this Top Secret info.
It's a pretty entertaining novel, tho it's oddly more character based than it is plot driven. Like a good majority of the book is less about the events that happen in the story and more about the guy's worries and insecurities and anxieties about suddenly being picked to be the President's new right hand man and how he's worried that the President who is known to be very mercurial could just as easily discard him from meetings and briefings leaving him radioactive. If the President were to suddenly decide to drop him, he wouldn't be able to just go back to his old office job because once the President personally discards you, you're pretty much done in the Administration. So he's understandably worried what this all means for his future which of course leaves him vulnerable to being manipulated by the daughter of the Russian Asset who wants to use him as a dupe.
I liked it for the most part, it does take a little getting used to. I feel like your sympathy for the main character might vary, you have to have a tolerance for him feeling sorry for himself and freaking out about what would appear to be good news on the regular...but I ended up liking him and the novel in which he's the protagonist of. It was overall a pretty good read and one I would recommend tho the story involving the Russian asset's daughter may be the least convincing part of it all.
While this is at first seen as a boon since it elevates his status a great deal, this also soon becomes all very, very stressful for the speechwriter whom because the President has now taken a personal interest, has made a rather embittered enemy in the President's chief of staff who has no idea whom this lowly speechwriter is nor how this random speechwriter got the ear of the President. This is just one of the things that the speechwriter has to deal with now, he also has to deal almost unknowingly with a Russian asset who enlists his daughter to seduce the speechwriter (the speechwriter is currently staying at the YMCA for his wife now hates his guts for working for the president whom she vehemently opposes on all issues--somehow this wasn't as much of an issue when he was just a speechwriter on staff and didn't have to work with the President one on one as much) after a cleaning woman (also working for the Russian asset) accidentally finds some of the shredded Q Clearance Top Secret documents on grain shortages or whatever and giving the shredded bits to the Russian Asset, the Russian Asset thinks that this speechwriter must be well connected and bursting with Top Secret docs that are worth stealing. (They Are Not to say the least)
This obsession with collecting these seemingly worthless top secret documents is now surprisingly topical thanks to events in the news in the past year where you had stories about Trump having taken classified documents out of the White House with him, followed by stories in which classified documents were found at the home office of Joe Biden from when he was Vice President. Reading this novel honestly kinda helped shed some light on the idea that there might just be too many things labeled Top Secret since surely not everything labeled that needs to be so right? At least that's what our newly minted ace speechwriter soon comes to find out given that he can't make heads or tails of some of these that are given him and that he to diligently shred lest anyone get their hands on it.
Anyways the story soon involves him being seduced and unexpectedly she actually falls for him and comes clean about who she is and what her mission was supposed to be, and he's gotta think of a way not only out of the jam he now finds himself in, but also has to think of a way to save her neck as well from the Russian handlers who are expecting to be fed this Top Secret info.
It's a pretty entertaining novel, tho it's oddly more character based than it is plot driven. Like a good majority of the book is less about the events that happen in the story and more about the guy's worries and insecurities and anxieties about suddenly being picked to be the President's new right hand man and how he's worried that the President who is known to be very mercurial could just as easily discard him from meetings and briefings leaving him radioactive. If the President were to suddenly decide to drop him, he wouldn't be able to just go back to his old office job because once the President personally discards you, you're pretty much done in the Administration. So he's understandably worried what this all means for his future which of course leaves him vulnerable to being manipulated by the daughter of the Russian Asset who wants to use him as a dupe.
I liked it for the most part, it does take a little getting used to. I feel like your sympathy for the main character might vary, you have to have a tolerance for him feeling sorry for himself and freaking out about what would appear to be good news on the regular...but I ended up liking him and the novel in which he's the protagonist of. It was overall a pretty good read and one I would recommend tho the story involving the Russian asset's daughter may be the least convincing part of it all.
February 10, 2019
Caught by surprise with this one. Most of his other books have hardly a trace of humor but this book is laugh out loud funny. Genuinely funny.
October 10, 2020
A very funny book. An account of a speech writer who strikes a chord with the President of the United States.
November 26, 2020
Read in 1989. A comic masterpiece of Cold War misunderstanding.
December 29, 2022
A fun story about a guy who accidentally gets in good with the president. Nothing too fancy or pretentious but just enjoyable
July 31, 2023
Good fun!
April 3, 2010
I'm officially half way through this book and I thought maybe it was just a slow starter. No it just flat sucks. It's about a presidential speech writer and what happens at work no action or intrique. The only thing that's happened so far is his wife left him and even though he had the house he's now living a the YMCA. Stupid.
I don't have much of a selection because of all the authors I've exhausted at our local library so I'll probably read the rest of it.
Oh by the way this is supposed to be a comedy by the writer of Jaws and The Deep. But it reminds me of a T.V. show called The Office. It's supposed to be funny but like this book it's not and in fact is boring and annoying and a total waste of time. I need better books.
January 8, 2008
Through this book, I got a picture of what it's like to work in a White House. I've learned a lot on speech writing and on being perceptive, aside from the fact that it's really entertaining.
December 5, 2010
Disliked White shark but really liked this one, so I'm hopeful about the other book I have of his to read.
January 3, 2011
And nothing about sharks! Great, fun read.
September 12, 2011
love books that make me laugh out loud. read this book ages ago -- might need to read again.
October 10, 2011
A GREAT beach read. Pure entertainment
January 7, 2015
Just a funny, light hearted spy novel. A very enjoyable read
October 28, 2013
Filled with great humor and absurdity only the government can create. A little sad at the end but a worthy read.
October 5, 2014
Presidential speech writer Timothy Burnham is suddenly given the top secret "Q" clearance in regards to nuclear secrets. This power soon gets him involved in a game that he does not want to play.
May 3, 2016
read SOMETIME in 2003
Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews