Protect and Defend

Burdened with a bleak economy and an unpopular foreign policy, U.S. President Donald Kells finds his greatest threat in his own vice president, an ambitious Texan who has struck a deal with the intelligence community. National ad/promo. Tour.

Special assistant to President Lyndon Johnson in the 1960s, Valenti (Speak Up with Confidence) here spins a political thriller that features an intriguing twist on domestic affairs, but is dated on the international front. In an unspecified time prior to the collapse of the U.S.S.R, hawkish President Donald Kells, a first-term Democrat running for reelection, is challenged in the primaries by his own recently resigned vice president, dashing, womanizing Bill Rawlins. Rawlins is aided by the leader of the KGB, who, without the knowledge of the Soviet president, activates a mole in a very high place in order to obstruct Kells's planned overtures to China. Intricate subplots involve a journalist targeted by the KGB, hired Bulgarian hitmen and cocaine planted on a loyal Kells aide. Clumsy KGB efforts to discredit Kells make even Rawlins's backers nervous. Though the novel is sprinkled with such real people as New York Times reporter Maureen Dowd and former Washington Post editor-in-chief Ben Bradlee, stock players and insipid dialogue seriously diminish its plausibility and suspense.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Still another hat in the election-year-fiction ring, as former LBJ Special Assistant Valenti (A Very Human President, Speak Up with Confidence, etc.) pulls out all the stops in an effort to out-weird yesterday's headlines. The centerpiece of this scenario: smart, handsome, liberal, well- connected Texas Vice President Bill Rawlins challenges his own battered President, Don Kells, for the nomination. After a few paragraphs of lip service to unfashionably hawkish Kells, virtually all the party faithful--from Rawlins's own reptilian advisor Hoyle Henderson to main-chance White House staffer Mike Carson--prepare to bolt, leaving behind only rugged Special Assistant Clem Barkley, elderly Sen. Gifford Gray, and Kells's personal friends. Meanwhile, new trouble for the reelection campaign: Somebody's leaked word of Presidential counsel Willacy Hughes's forthcoming secret diplomatic mission to China--a game effort to stand against the newly toughened Russian confederation by supporting the leaders of a recent Chinese coup--and the likely source, newsman Roy Hickey, has been killed by a pair of Bulgarian heavies with links to the KGB; the FBI's found classified documents and dope stashed in the apartment of Terry Geer, another Special Assistant; and the charming, treacherous V.P. indicates that the Russians are prepared to make big political concessions if he's voted in. All this would be worrisome if Valenti weren't the kind of political Pollyanna who thinks the bad guys always stumble over their own feet. The book's real agenda becomes clear before it even gets under way, in the Acknowledgments and list of characters, in which names are dropped with frantic abandon, like barrels tossed off a sinking ship. Valenti's view of politics is by no means as simple-minded as some notable Beltway insiders', but he's no match for Tom Wicker (see below). -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

In trying to take advantage of the upcoming November political silliness, Valenti (head of the Motion Picture Association of America and former adviser to President Lyndon Johnson) has written an even sillier novel (a future movie script?). He has dreamed up a cast of thousands, including a beleaguered, wimpy president seeking reelection; the intrepid hero, who is a presidential adviser; the hero's pure-as-the-driven-snow FBI girlfriend; the wealthy, evil, villainous vice president, who is trying to usurp the nomination; a passionate woman done wrong; some evil Russians and their machinations; a spy and several other turncoats of another stripe; and various and sundry other supernumeraries. Valenti offers a plenitude of cameo roles for big-name stars to play. A list of characters helps readers keep track--but what's the difference? None of the players is memorable anyway. It's impossible to give a synopsis of the plot because there isn't one. Pre viewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 6/1/92.
- Dawn L. Anderson, North Richland Hills P.L., Tex.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.