"What if Biden and Obama teamed up to solve mysteries?" is the very definition of high concept farce. It's also a solid regriftance sales pitch in 2018. This book was pretty solidly average. There's two major approaches that I could imagine following that tagline. One is to do an absurdist, Clancy-esque techno thriller starring someone like The Onion's Diamond Joe Biden. The other is to do a low key realistic novel. Shaffer chose the latter, and I think the story suffers.

Stripped of the presidential trappings, a 75 year old recently retired man is having trouble in life after leaving his job and losing touch with his best friend from work. The sudden death of an old friend, an Amtrak conductor, prompts him to start to investigate, leading him through the seedy side of Wilmington Delaware and a criminal conspiracy involving a motorcycle gang, crooked cops, an insurance investigator, and a chance to bond with his lost friend from work in an armored Escalade. But taken as a mystery, the story doesn't amount to much. All the investigation goes nowhere, until Joe receives a letter from his dead friend explaining the criminal conspiracy. There's a pretty good fight on an the Acela, but that's it.

And from the high concept side, as an exploration of Biden and Obama's friendship, I never really felt like it was more than a shallow caricature of these guys. The only part that really worked were the Amtrak Joe bits.