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

Reviews

HJust 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.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

In the course of working on a story about presidential pardons, Jack Flynn, a chief Washington correspondent for a Boston newspaper, is invited to play golf with President Clayton Hutchins just days before the closely contested election. When an assassin wounds both Hutchins and Flynn, the two men are bound together by the near-death experience and the mystery surrounding the identity of the would-be assassin, killed by Secret Service agents. The shooting gives a boost to Hutchins' chances for election as an untested incumbent who inherited the office on the death of the former president. Hutchins has so far managed to slip through the privacy-shattering scrutiny of political campaigns as one fateful occurrence after another landed him in successive offices leading to the White House. Flynn gains notoriety for a career that has been on cruise-control since his wife died in childbirth a year ago. An anonymous source, who contacts Flynn as he's recovering in the hospital, leads him on a trail of clues that promises to produce the most challenging and dangerous news story of his career. His investigation takes him to a militia camp in Idaho, to the seedier parts of his hometown of Boston, and to the very corridors of power and influence in Washington, D.C., to uncover the secrets behind the assassination attempt. McGrory, a columnist with the Boston Globe, has written a fast-paced and riveting first novel, an insider's view of politics and journalism. Vanessa Bush
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

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