If James Comey seems like he's everywhere this week, that's because A Higher Loyalty hit bookstores (brick and mortar and online) Tuesday. The only question you need ask: should you actually, really, really read it, rather than just stick it on the shelf for a few years or skim the articles about it?

That this is an important book was never in doubt. An ousted FBI Director is spilling the beans on his meetings with the president prior to his surprise firing — including the "loyalty oath" he says Trump required of him. A book like this has never been written before in U.S. history; we can only hope it never has to be written again.

SEE ALSO: James Comey lets rip on Trump in first televised interview since firing

But let's get real: There are many important books we haven't read. This one is a 7-hour read at best; 9 and a half hours if you listen to Comey himself narrate the audiobook version. And you don't really need to read it to get the gist. Given his on-screen ubiquity, you've probably picked up the most newsworthy bits already.

(Comey reveals that Trump talked to him obsessively about the infamous pee tape. He sent his infamous letter, on reopening the Hillary Clinton email investigation just prior to the election, in part because he assumed that Clinton would win anyway. And after the election, Comey claims, President Obama absolved him of any mishandling of the Clinton matter. There, now you know enough to talk about it at your next party.)

Are you going to get any more insight by reading the thing cover to cover? Is it worth your precious time? Is Comey good company? Does he have a compelling writing style, or the wooden prose of a lawman making a report? Will it inspire you into action or lull you to sleep?

To answer these questions, I tore through both the ebook and the audiobook of A Higher Loyalty. I'm glad to report a compelling time was had, that it's one of the better examples of the celebrity autobiography genre, and that there is plenty to chew on — both in what Comey says and realizes about himself, and in what he doesn't say or realize.

It's kind of a classic trope of detective fiction made real. Honest, straight-as-an-arrow lawman has tragic flaw, and it's up to you the reader to tease it out.

The Wedgie Incident

Comey's writing style is brisk, thankfully, and he has a hell of an arc to his life that keeps the pages turning. From his almost Batman-like origin story (a Son of Sam-style serial killer entered his home when he was a kid in 1977; Comey had to talk his way out of getting killed), through his helping to put mafia boss John Gotti away in the 1980s, his prosecuting Martha Stewart in the 1990s, his investigation of Bill Clinton's controversial Marc Rich pardon, his fighting off Dick Cheney's surveillance and torture programs in the Bush White House, his investigation of racial profiling in Ferguson, his story swirled through the center of American events even before 2016.

The guy's like Zelig with a bigger ego.

One of two main strands to his life that Comey explores methodically is the difficulty of standing up to bullies, and the difficulty of avoiding them. There's a fair bit of bouncing around in time at the start of the book, from Trump to a mafia informant to high school, which is because Comey is trying to build a case that all bullies act the same, and not standing up to them can have dire consequences.

Let bullying exist unchallenged for too long and you may even become one, as Comey briefly did in college, in a dorm room situation he describes as "Lord of the Flies." He had become a bully on the outside; inside, "I was a timid hypocrite."

The lesson is a warning: "In the face of the herd," he says, "our tendency is to go silent." And join the herd by default.

He's like the FBI's Mr. Rogers

At times Comey can be a bit too methodical in building his case. There's rather too much about an old grocer he worked for and admired. And then in ninth grade, then a literal choir boy with baby fat, he joined the school football team but fell victim to a couple of wedgie artists.

He sets the scene like it's congressional testimony:

"If memory serves, a wedgie involved ripping another boy’s underwear out of his pants by grabbing the rear waistband of his underwear and yanking upward."

Hearing Comey actually say those words with a straight voice is just one of the reasons why I can recommend the audiobook over other formats.

The other is that he just has the right voice for what they used to call a fireside chat. He's like the FBI's Mr. Rogers, authoritative yet vulnerable, as in the heartbreaking chapter where Comey relates how his baby son Colin died needlessly after birth the hospital hadn't required a certain kind of blood test for pregnant women. His wife Patrice campaigned tirelessly, the law was changed, and Comey's voice cracks as he relates it all.

The truth, and nothing but the truth?

The second strand Comey earnestly follows throughout his career is the importance of truthfulness: how one lie can lead to an epidemic. Here again there is an original sin that troubles the devout Catholic Comey: After college, he used to lie about having played college basketball. He hadn't, but he was 6' 8", and it was just quicker to fib when people asked about it in elevators.

But he saw the light, in his telling, and with the zeal of the convert, Comey began to fight for the importance of truth in law. It's why he put Martha Stewart behind bars — not that she insider traded, but that she lied to the FBI about it. It's why he went toe to toe with Cheney on torture and surveillance, because no truthful lawyer could think his laws lawful. (And because he saw in Cheney's hardline ideas truth's deadliest enemy, confirmation bias.)

And it is why he felt obligated to handle the Hillary Clinton e-mail investigation the way he did. I was no fan of what Comey did in 2016, but in reading A Higher Loyalty I could make peace with it.

Comey was doing things by the book. He wanted the investigation to be unimpeachable. There were legit reasons for the three fateful Clinton statements he made — the one where he wrapped up the investigation but called her "extremely careless" (wording he now regrets), the one reopening the investigation less than two weeks before the election, and the one closing it again two days prior to the polls. And he was tortured and sought much advice on each choice.

I accept that Comey faced, as he said, no good options. What if the existence of the extra emails leaked and he was revealed to have sat on them? What I don't accept, then or now, is Comey's view of the bigger picture.

After all, the Trump campaign was also under FBI investigation, and had been since early 2016. Comey didn't confirm that until March 2017. He was working too closely to the book again, sticking to (mostly) standard practice of not revealing the existence of FBI investigations.

But with the re-opening and re-closing of the Clinton investigation, Comey had commented publicly three times on one candidate's investigation — and zero on the other. In what way was that equitable to the candidates?

In his studious search for neutrality and truthfulness, Comey let the bully win. And then, after the election, he admits he didn't push back nearly strongly enough against Trump's loyalty demands. "I was determined not to give the president any hint of assent to this demand, so I gave silence instead," Comey writes.

It's horribly ironic that he doesn't remember this important maxim of the law: Qui tacet consentit. Silence is consent.

And that is this most fascinating lawman's fatal flaw: though committed to the truth and the fight against bullies, in the most important moment of his life, eleven days before an election, Comey stayed half-silent. He didn't tell the whole truth about a truth-denying bully when it most mattered.

He's more than speaking out now, of course. History will judge whether it was enough.