From Publishers Weekly
If Bowker ( Replica ) hasn't combined The Last Hurrah and All the King's Men , he's come pretty close. Narrator James O'Connor, a young Republican Senator in heavily Democratic Massachusetts, has a month to go in his reelection campaign when he finds the body of ex-mistress Amanda in her Back Bay Boston apartment. The plot tracks O'Connor's attempts to find the killer, avert scandal and win the election, but the real story concerns the Senator's relations with his family: a privacy-craving wife, a precocious daughter, a widowed father and a ne'er-do-well older brother born the same year as he, his "Irish twin." Almost as important are his trials with friends and foes, including a campaign worker in love with him, a manager with White House dreams, a slavishly devoted driver, the archenemy Boston D.A. and the Governor trying for his seat. All these characters come alive, most notably an emotionally restrained, proud, puckish father, who laments: "Two sons . . . one a lush, the other a Republican. Where did I go wrong?" Though the political setting rings wonderfully true, we don't quite see the rather stiff-necked narrator as a natural politician, much less as a lover of the glamorous Amanda. But the plot remains practically bullet-proof, right up to the surprising, ambiguous ending.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Several life forms are featured in this page turner, among them crooks and politicians, (interchangeable) girlfriends, campaign workers and hangers-on, family members, and old buddies. Having extricated his brother from troublesome situations involving the IRA, gunrunners, and neighborhood toughs, Attorney General Jim O'Connor sets himself up for even more trouble by pursuing another term in the Senate. The investigation into his girlfriend's murder opens a can of worms big enough to start a chain of bait shops. Will the murderer be caught? Will the family find out? Will O'Connor remember which lies are really the truth? This novel is well worth reading if only to restore one's cynicism about political maneuverings. For popular collections.
- Lynn Thompson, formerly of Ozark Regional Lib., Ironton, Mo.Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.