Senator: A Novel - Hardcover

Bowker, Richard

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0688124542 ISBN 13: 9780688124540

Publisher: William Morrow & Co, 1994

Synopsis

Republican Senator Jim O'Connor finds his perfect life and successful career thrown into turmoil when he discovers the corpse of his murdered mistress in her apartment during his reelection campaign. By the author of Replica. 20,000 first printing.

About this title

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 Booklist:

The skeletons in the closet of Jim O'Connor, Bay State Irish pol and presidential aspirant, rattle loud and suspensefully in this exciting mystery. Prime suspect in the knife murder of a young female reporter, O'Connor lies about his amours with the victim, telling investigators that their assignations were innocent news interviews. If the fibs, once revealed, don't blow his career out of the water, ancient political enemies closing in on long-hidden ties to a mobster lurk just as dangerously beneath the surface. An ongoing reelection campaign lets Bowker inject ruthless aides into the action but also furnishes the means for releasing a mainspring in the mystery: in a debate, Senator O'Connor recalls a 1969 Harvard riot. Its radical leader (latterly turned speculator) knows a few critical secrets about the murder that O'Connor, in desperation, tries to pry loose to vindicate himself. Ultimately, the perp turns out to be the person least expected. Those with a taste for mixing politics and murder will savor the tale to the end. Gilbert Taylo

About this edition

• Publisher: William Morrow & Co
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 0688124542
• ISBN 13: 9780688124540
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 383