A t first They All Ran After the President's Wife looks like an account of modern-day terrorism, but it eventually turns out to be a melodrama in which social issues are of slight significance.

Wexler Klint misleads investigators by making the kidnaping of Sandra look like the efforts of international terrorists to force the United States to free an assassin so utterly despicable that even Saddam Hussein of Iraq, unhappy though he may be with the United States, says that he would execute him. The social significance of this is its plausibility. If this plot element does not strike one as believable, none of the rest of the story will succeed in holding one's interest. Yet, this plot twist is likely to strike modern readers as so believable that it will not even give them pause; such is the status of terrorism in the public mind...