Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, August 6, 1995 TAG: 9508090024
SECTION: BOOKS PAGE: D-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MIKE MAYO BOOK PAGE EDITOR
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Despite an unusual amount of overcontrivance, ``Shelley's Heart'' is one of the best and most enjoyable political thrillers to appear in decades. In fact, fans of the form will have to go back to Richard Condon's ``The Manchurian Candidate'' to find another so intricately constructed and simultaneously so credible and so unbelievable.
In the early years of the next century, on the eve of President Frosty Lockwood's inauguration to his second term, he learns that his election may have been stolen. That's what his opponent, ex-President Franklin Mallory, says. Were computers employed by a few intelligence agents to adjust vote totals in key precincts? If so, who ordered it, and why?
Could it have anything to do with another embarrassing and potentially impeachable presidential action? Further complicating matters is confusion on the presidential succession. Speaker of the House Attenborough is dying of alcoholism, and the Senate is deadlocked in a 50-50 Democratic-Republican tie.
Early on the action is sparked by a shocking assassination, and the title itself refers to a bizarre conspiracy best left undescribed. That side of the novel revolves around the fourth major character, Archimedes Hammett, a radical lawyer strongly reminiscent of William Kunstler, who's appointed chief justice of the United States. (That is the most far-fetched element of the plot, and it takes a heroic suspension of disbelief to overcome it.)
Once that's been accomplished, the rest of the novel is a wild ride through the corridors of power.
Author McCarry writes persuasively of Washington's elite. His descriptions of their luxurious haunts and social rituals have the sense of authority that fans of Washington fiction like to believe is fact.
McCarry, formerly a Republican speech writer, doesn't try to hide his own political biases. His is a world of liberally biased media, fanatic feminists and conniving cabalists all out to thwart the will of the people. The conservatives are misunderstood, well-intentioned, honorable, thrifty, brave, clean and reverent, etc. But McCarry keeps his fictional pot at such a rapid boil that it hardly matters.
Even toward the end, when most stories of this kind settle into familiar grooves, the novel is impossible to predict.
Throughout, McCarry creates vivid, interesting characters and he writes with such wit that even those who disagree with his politics will keep reading. Note:
``What do all rulers have that nobody else has? The right to offer human sacrifice. The Caesars crucified folks. Montezuma did it by having priests cut out people's hearts. The kings of England chopped off heads. Lincoln and Wilson and FDR and JFK and LBJ and the rest of 'em sent American boys off by the carload to get blown up in wars. It's all the same damn thing. Nobody questioned their right to do it, then or now. Public slaughter makes everybody feel better.''
Even though it's late in the season, ``Shelley's Heart'' is one of the year's most engaging and rewarding beach reads.
by CNB