The Incumbent - Hardcover

McGrory, Brian

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0743403509 ISBN 13: 9780743403504

Publisher: Atria, 2000

Synopsis

For Jack Flynn, Washington correspondent for the Boston Record, it's a chance for the type of exclusive story about which most reporters can only dream: a round of golf with President Clayton Hutchins just days before he stands in front of voters in what has been the closest race for the White House in decades.
But events on the links take a surprising turn. On the tenth tee, the president, confident of renewing his mandate, offers Jack the job of press secretary in his new administration. Minutes later, shots are fired. The president is wounded. Jack is caught in the hail of bullets. And the gunman lies dead nearby, taken out by the Secret Service.
As he recuperates in the hospital, Jack receives an anonymous telephone call about the shooting, warning him that "nothing is as it seems."
Using his considerable journalistic skills, Jack sets forth on an investigation that takes him from a remote militia compound in Idaho to the inner sanctums of the federal government - and which forces him to face a devastating personal tragedy he has been unable to confront for a year. Along the way, with his bosses at the newspaper hounding him for daily scoops, the White House urging him to accept the president's job offer, and a fetching female FBI agent breathing down his neck, his anonymous source continues to contact him with new clues - and new warnings.
But just as he seems to be getting close to the truth, Jack Flynn unwittingly becomes front-page news himself.

About this title

Review:

Author Brian McGrory's experience as a veteran in Washington journalism ought to serve him well in this insider's take on presidential politics, which has been thoughtfully timed for pre-election publication. The premise is a good one: an assassination attempt just days before Clayton Hutchins faces his first national race for the White House, witnessed by a reporter who's been invited to join the campaign as press secretary. But there are too many holes in the back story to make this thriller credible, as McGrory should know. The plot turns on a secret any self-respecting reporter would have tumbled to at the time Hutchins, a self-made millionaire who was elected governor of a Midwestern state in a last-minute landslide, was appointed to replace a vice president who died in office. It strains credulity that by the time Hutchins ascends to the presidency (just a few weeks before the election, when the incumbent also dies in office) that his entire life has not been so thoroughly scrutinized that there are no skeletons left in his closet.

A warning by an anonymous caller that "nothing is as it seems" sets reporter Jack Flynn on the trail of the truth, a trail that takes him first to a militia compound in Idaho and then to a workingman's bar in Boston before he realizes that the answers are hidden much closer to home. The flaws in the plot are even more glaring considering the paeans to investigative journalism and its heroes with which McGrory seasons his narrative. It wouldn't have taken Bob Woodward or Carl Bernstein 10 minutes of telephone research to conclude what the author requires three-quarters of a novel to figure out. But in an election year when the candidates compete to see who can put the voters to sleep first, The Incumbent may whet the appetites of a few political junkies. --Jane Adams

From the Publisher:

FROM KIRKUS REVIEWS:

What’s the quickest way for a D.C. correspondent’s career to take off? Being on the scene of a presidential assassination attempt – as the surrogate hero of Boston Globe columnist McGrory discovers to his cost in this breathless debut thriller.

Phoning the White House to ask a routine question about presidential pardons, Boston Record reporter Jack Flynn is taken aback to find himself invited to a round of golf with President Clayton Hutchins, then dumbfounded when Hutchins, locked in a tight election battle, invites him aboard as his press secretary. And that’s before the shots ring out on the 16th green, leaving both men wounded and Jack weighing the decision of a lifetime: Should he vault into the stratosphere by joining the unelected incumbent’s staff, or by riding his eyewitness story as far as it will take him? His reporter’s instincts push him toward the story, especially once his savvy Record colleague Steve Havlicek proves that the shooter the Secret Service killed on the links isn’t Tony Clawson, the California drifter they claim he is, and Jack realizes that the links between Clawson and right-wing survivalist groups that have been driving his reporting are nothing but plants. Even so, he still doesn’t know the identity of the phone tipster who’s been offering him encouragement or telling him, “Nothing is as it seems”; or the reason snipers and bombers keep trying to kill him; or the way the botched assassination is connected to a botched armored car robbery in Boston 20 years ago (though heads-up readers will be ahead of Jack on this last twist).

Through it all – crisp action scenes, formula romance, and a monster story that plows forward with the momentum of a runaway train – McGrory never lets you forget you’re reading about a working-stiff whose first priority is to tell the truth, legally sourced, in time for the early edition tonight and every night.

FROM PUBLISHERS WEEKLY (starred review):

Just in time for the 2000 presidential campaign comes this crisp Washington thriller, a superb first novel from the Boston Globe’s former chief White House correspondent. The intrigue begins less than two weeks before the election. Jack Flynn, chief White House reporter for a Boston paper, asks at a press conference why President Clayton Hutchins has pardoned a certain felon. Quickly, Flynn is summoned to join the president for golf at Congressional Country Club, where he’s invited to become the next White House press secretary. Right after that, a gunman opens fire, grazing the president but landing Flynn in Bethesda Naval Hospital. He’s no sooner awake after surgery than he receives an anonymous phone warning: “Do not believe anything that they tell you.” Flynn, of course, wants to investigate the attempted assassination; unfortunately for him, Secret Service agents have not only killed the shooter, but have conveniently rendered his body very hard to identify. Further mysterious phone calls put Flynn on the trail of what he suspects is an FBI coverup. From D.C., the trail leads to a remote Idaho militia stronghold, and then to murky dives in Boston. The peripatetic journalist-hero must stay one jump ahead of a killer intent on eliminating him and his story. Meanwhile, romantic overtures from sexy FBI agent Samantha Stevens tie Flynn in knots while the body count rises. As Flynn comes closer to the truth, questions of journalistic ethics, newspaper culture and Clinton-era politics begin to inform the narrative. Fans of Baldacci’s Absolute Power or Demille’s The Lion’s Game should plunge into McGrory’s enticing plot, following Flynn and his makeshift allies, and enemies through a complex and credible web of deceit.

About this edition

• Publisher: Atria
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0743403509
• ISBN 13: 9780743403504
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 352