The Innocent Have Nothing to Fear

July 25, 2016
In the days leading up to the 2020 Republican National Convention in New Orleans, J.D. Callahan, son of a famous Louisiana civil rights lawyer and himself a savvy political campaign manager, scrambles to lure the delegates needed to secure the party nomination for his boss, Vice President Hilda Smith. Her opponent for the nomination is Armstrong George, a Donald Trumpâesque extremist governor from Colorado looking to build a wall across the Mexican border and militarize the nation. While Callahan schemes for Smith, he finds himself also stuck dealing with his half-brothers: Paul, himself aiming to enter New Orleans politics, and Tyler, a skinhead manager of a local strip club. To make matters worse, someone is detonating small explosions around the city, frightening Smith's delegates and reinforcing George's scare tactic rhetoric. Stevens (The Last Season) offers some interesting insight into what goes into a political campaign, but his repetitive prose, narrative leaps in logic, and stereotypical characters fail to truly resonate. The real-life presidential race currently consuming the United States in 2016 makes this fictional excursion feel like a pale imitation.

April 15, 2016
That title may be the biggest of this satiric thriller's red herrings, since, as far as this book is concerned, there are no innocents in the political process. A charismatic right-wing Republican populist with a hectoring anti-immigrant riff is running for president, and the only person who can slow his roll is a woman moderate with ties to the outgoing administration. No, this book is not about the 2016 presidential campaign. But the fact that even these aspects of the novel are in sync with current events validates its author's credentials as a cagey veteran political operative. That description applies to crafty, cynical J.D. Callahan, who normally would find a million reasons to avoid going back home to New Orleans except that it happens to be the site of a wide-open GOP convention pitting his candidate, incumbent Vice President Hilda Smith, against Colorado Gov. Armstrong George, who's running on a platform powered by anti-terror paranoia as exemplified by what J.D. characterizes as "the crazy train of his wacky New Bill of Rights." Callahan's efforts to match the Veep's steely rationality against George's xenophobic bluster are bumrushed by bombs scattered throughout Crescent City that panic the locals and scare some of the fence-sitting delegates into George's rising column of support. As J.D. struggles to keep both his head and his client in the game, he's also got to deal with vicious backbiting from within the Smith staff, somewhat irrational (and also improbable) suspicions from the FBI that J.D. himself is somehow responsible for the bombs, a sexy gossip columnist with informed knowledge of serious firearms, and a pair of estranged half siblings with dubious issues of their own, one a pardoned felon seeking his brother's help for a run at state office, the other an ex-GI-turned-skinhead strip-club owner. These and other characterizations are as quirky as J.D.'s rueful, acerbic commentaries, which make up the best part of this fast-paced carnival of bile, guile, and blow-ups. In an era as politically mercurial as our own, even the most far-fetched events depicted here sound utterly plausible--except for maybe one thing: moderate Republicans? Really? What are those?

COPYRIGHT(2016) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

June 1, 2016
Political consultant and writer Stevens (The Last Season, 2015) returns to fiction in this suspenseful satire set in New Orleans during the hotly contested Republican presidential convention of 2020. J. D. Callahan, campaign manager for the vice president's presidential bid, sees his candidate's prospects going down the tubes after a dye-filled bomb explodes in the French Quarter. J. D. really isn't thrilled about being back in his hometown, and now he needs to figure out who is literally blowing up his candidate's chance at winning the nomination. It's old-school politics mixed with a caustic jambalaya of trouble involving J. D.'s estranged half-brothers, a terrorist, untrustworthy policemen, a gorgeous reporter, and a blustery political rival whose prospects are bolstered by the explosions. The race to find the terrorist heats up as the vice president's delegates threaten to shift their allegiance. Set in the very near future, this fun romp through high-stakes politics plays in interesting parallel to the antics of the current 2016 presidential race.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)