Who murdered Walter Bodmor Slurrie, America’s most prominent political figure? Ex-Vice-President-and destined to be the next President…ex-Congressman, ex-Senator, ex-country Texan, son, husband, father, friend, wheeler-dealer, money grubber, idealist, Slurrie did not lack for enemies. 

​

Parallel investigations by the NYPD and the Secret Police ruthlessly uncover the dead man’s life and times, creating a classic suspense thriller in the great and singular Condon tradition: a chilling history at once comic and profound, of contemporary American politics since World War II.

​

The man who amassed a gigantic fortune in less than 20 years of “public service” had rejected in his youth the lure of urban politics offered by school pal Charlie Coffey (son of New York’s ancient political machinery) and moved from his merchandisable law school to the navy where Slurrie discovered the great anti-Red cause of post-war America, a horse he rode to victory.

​

But there are many with special knowledge of the most American of politicos: “Kiddo” Cardozo, his partner in greed: Betsy, ex-DC secretary who becomes his partner in marriage, bearing him much love but finding her sex life elsewhere; Nudey Danzig, crime chieftain who still smells of the Purple Gang; the priest who teaches him his first political catechism; Marie Coffey, the nurse whom was has turned into and maddened dove; Horace Riddle Hind, billionaire inventor whose compulsions have driven him to a filthy solitude; and all the Democrats and Republicans who have equally created Slurrie’s success.

​

Which one had the knowledge of both victim and self that led to the shooting in the velvet Victorian armchair in the bathtub in the Waldorf suite of the “Inner Committee”?

​

A relentless revelation of those who own America, run it, and occasionally rent it out to the rest of us, by America’s greatest muralist, the man who has been called “Nabokov without tears.”