Embrace the Serpent

Suspecting that the U.S.-supported successor to Cuba's Fidel Castro is actually a Russian puppet, Senator Bob Grant must prove that his suspicions are well-founded and attempt to encourage a military uprising in Cuba. 75,000 first printing. $75,000 ad/promo. Tour.

Though no match for the Brontes, Alsops or Jameses, the Quayles are making their own little splash in the publishing sea. Dan Quayle's new manifesto, The American Family, is due out in May, and here comes a new thriller from his wife and her sister (who previously coauthored Embrace the Serpent), in its own way a politically charged paean to "family values." U.S. Senator Bob Grant, running for a third term from Georgia, is topping Republican presidential polls even though he's black, and is being eyed warily by the Democratic incumbent. Grant has a comfortable lead in his Senate race but, nine days before the election, a reporter for the liberal Washington Herald is murdered while working on a story that purportedly would ruin the senator. When Grant's college-age son is then arrested in a set-up drug bust, the senator sets out with a few loyal friends to find the truth. The Grant family makes TV's Huxtables look like hippies (to the Grants, religion is "the sustainer of their lives individually and as a married couple"), while the Democratic president is presented as a philandering wimp controlled by his ruthless attorney general. Other targets in the authors' sights include liberal journalists who determine "the focus, content, and in essence the bias of much of the national news," and politicians who "accepted no responsibility for their actions... such depravity was excused and even condoned." A novel like this one makes you realize how good Anonymous is?and how inept are authors who pen lines such as, "Like an hourglass whose sands had expired, Rebecca Hunter slowly sagged to the floor." Just like this novel, in fact. $70,000 ad/promo; author tour.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Fidel Castro's fatal heart attack in a meeting modifies the agenda for everybody. The coauthors are the nation's Second Lady and the Vice-President's sister-in-law. When a lifetime of leadership and big cigars takes its toll on El Jefe, cutting him off forever in the middle of an endlessly interesting Marxist monologue, his loyal staff clamp down on the news, sealing off the presidential palace until they can settle the little matter of succession. But Maria, the palace parlormaid, a loyal member of La Causa, the opposition underground, spirits the news out with the garbage, and wheels start to turn in Washington, Moscow, and Hong Kong. Hong Kong? Where else would oil-rich Persians plot Islamic world domination? The power struggle in Havana is brutish but short, settling creepy Cesar Valles into the presidential chair with the secret backing of the resident Russians. The struggle in Washington, however, has just begun. Right-minded Senator Bob Grant (R-[Surprise!] Georgia), who has ties to La Causa, fights the wimpy Democratic President, the irresponsible local newspaper, the cuckolded gasbag senator from Iowa, and a villainous Soviet mole in the Senate foreign-policy machinery to keep the country from embracing Cuba's treacherous new leaders. Fidel's funeral is the site of the showdown. One can only hope that the Washington insights here are badly mistaken. Everyone talks in the strangest way. (``But, Cesar, I'm, well...I'm shocked. Castro seemed indestructible. His impact on Cuba--nay, on the entire world--can't be denied.'') The geopolitically thrilling plot, however, is an acceptable first effort. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.