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Reviewed by Vincent Dublado for Readers' Favorite
Here’s the surprising thing about The Day of the Ferret by Michael Woodman: It’s good, intelligent, and funny because it resonates with parallels to the life of an American president that it lampoons. Here you will meet U.S. President John Thomas Rump who is beginning to fall from grace. In order to sway voters back to his side, he plots a fake assassination on himself. Ronald Reagan had the lowest approval ratings of any first-term US President until John Hinckley shot him. Following that failed assassination attempt, Reagan’s ratings soared and he went on to win a second term. Rump’s attorney, Benny Capone, thinks of a workaround for Rump’s fake assassination. Enter Gatlin Fry, a former MI6 agent chosen to do the fake hit. But what the president doesn’t know is that his plot is about to get real.
The Day of the Ferret is a lot more than the life it tries to spoof. If adapted into a film, it would be equally funny and insightful in its absurd perspective on political life. Michael Woodman has put an astonishing amount of chutzpah and information into the pages and blends subplots and details into a coherent storyline that holds it together. It provides a balanced focus on the president, the fall guy, and everyone in between to make this absurd political tale a brilliant flight of the imagination. Much of the novel’s ethical content revolves around how the most powerful man in the United States plots a scheme to maintain his position and its ramifications when it doesn’t go according to plan. As a political lampoon, The Day of the Ferret handles its theme with insight and wry humor, an entertaining story for grownups that you want to read for its inventiveness.