Book Review: ‘Deep State’ Is A Great Debut Political Thriller

Deep State is the debut novel from author Chris Hauty and what a great debut it is. He has written the first great thriller of the new year. It starts off strong with great character in Hayley Chill and never lets up, leading up to a climatic showdown and a twist you never see coming. I have been reading these type of books for years and very rarely am I left surprised by a twist. Kudos to Chris for this.

Hayley Chill has left her promising boxing career and the army in Fort Hood for something different. She ends up getting an internship at the White House with the Chief of Staff. It starts out on the bad side when he fellow interns and others just don’t like her. Here job as first is to work with other interns archiving and answering corespondents. Soon she is asked to sit in on meetings and even draws the eye of the President Richard Monroe himself (who in my opinion in this book is based on a certain orange haired person). When Hayley has the job of delivering the notes for the day to the Chief of Staffs house the next morning she finds him on the floor in his kitchen. She sees a clue that may point to him being murdered. The general conclusion is nothing out of the ordinary happened to him.

Hayley doesn’t believe this and soon learns a lot more than she should. Is there a deep state at work here and can she prove it without getting herself killed? The more she discovers, the deeper she gets in with no one to trust or to turn too, she takes it upon herself to uncover and expose this situation before it’s too late. Too say anymore would be spoiling the well-written story.

You can pick up Deep State in stores on Tuesday, January 7th from Atria.