Hillary Clinton is a former presidential hopeful, secretary of state and first lady. And she has now partnered up with renowned author Louise Penny for the publication of her first novel – a thriller featuring a US government “dangerously out of touch” amid a series of terror attacks.

The novel follows a novice secretary of state and explores a world of “high stakes diplomacy and treachery” according to Clinton. And the novel’s protagonist has “joined the administration of her rival, a president inaugurated after four years of American leadership that shrank from the world stage”. It features a series of terrorist attacks which throws the global order into disarray, and the secretary is tasked with assembling a team to “unravel the deadly conspiracy”.

Mrs Clinton served as US secretary of state under the Obama administration for four years from 2009 to 2013, before losing against Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential race. As such, publishers promise behind-the-scenes drama “informed by details only an insider could know”.

Mrs Clinton, the author of numerous non-fiction works, described writing with Penny as “a dream come true”. And Canadian crime author Penny, known for the Chief Inspector Armand Gamache series, said it was “an incredible experience to get inside the State Department, inside the White House, inside the mind of the secretary of state as high-stake crises explode”.

‘State of Terror’ will be released on 12th October 2021.

(Article extracted from BBC News with minor revisions to the headline and text by Sakshi Selvanathan)