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                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, January 31, 1993                   TAG: 9301310226
SECTION: HORIZON                    PAGE: F-4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Reviewed by PAXTON DAVIS
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

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WICKER UNPEELS POLITICS

DONOVAN'S WIFE. By Tom Wicker. Morrow. $22.

Few Americans know their nation's politics more intimately than Tom Wicker, who was a Washington reporter (and briefly bureau chief) for The New York Times and later, for many years, a political columnist whose reports and views were read everywhere.

He is also a compelling writer of political books, including, recently, an unorthodox study of Richard Nixon, as well as a political novelist of great skill. Here, in "Donovan's Wife," he tackles modern campaigning, specifically via a senatorial contest, pitting an unimpressive congressman against a two-term incumbent who cannot, it seems, be whipped.

But this would be to ignore contemporary campaigning. Working for Congressman Donovan is one of the new breed of hired- gun whiz kids whose mastery of computers and polls, and whose innocence of anything as old-fashioned as honesty or conscience, permit him and encourage the dark horse, Donovan, to, as they say nowadays, go for it.

He goes for it, and as he does Wicker reveals, as if peeling an onion, the intricacies of campaigning in the modern mold. Involved also are a sharp Washington columnist named Milo Speed, whose career sounds not unlike Wicker's, and Donovan's wife, for whom, years afterward, Speed still carries a brightly burning torch.

It makes for a busy and compelling tale whose central interest remains the nuts-and-bolts of today's impersonal (and depressing) politics.

Paxton Davis' most recent book is "A Boy No More."

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