The Voter File

March 30, 2020
Pepper’s timely third novel featuring reporter Jack Sharpe (after 2018’s The Wingman) finds Sharpe, recently let go from his network TV job, drawn into freelancing by the surprising results in an obscure Wisconsin judicial election, where a heavily favored incumbent inexplicably lost to a neophyte. A low-level staffer who worked for the winning candidate explains to Sharpe that someone must have hacked the incumbent’s voter file, a treasure trove of semi-private and sometimes confidential information that both Democrats and Republicans keep on their registrants. Sharpe, a burned-out but nonetheless savvy journalist, logically wonders: why use such a potent political weapon to influence the result of such an inconsequential race? Sharpe has to fend off a brutal hit man as he gets on the trail of a foreign plot to take over entire segments of the U.S. economy. Never mind that the action spins into the overly dramatic toward the end. Pepper offers a well-researched, gripping look at one of the many perilous wrinkles in the electoral system. Agent: Mitch Hoffman, Aaron M. Priest Literary.

April 1, 2020
Nefarious forces try to rig American elections in this highly plausible political thriller. In Wisconsin, investigative reporter Jack Sharpe loses his job reporting for Republic News on TV. Saddled with a noncompete agreement, he freelances for newspapers and really needs a big story. Luckily, Tori Justice wants to tell him hers. She was the voter file manager for a local judge who won a special election even though "there's no conceivable way" he could have won. Voter files are even "better than polling," because they contain a huge amount of personal data on every voter collected by state and national parties, from voting records to magazine subscriptions to the ads people click on. Perhaps someone has hacked the voter files and rigged the election, but who? How? Why? Readers soon learn that this is a test case for a scheme that's "a lot bigger than Wisconsin," involving "at least one Albanian mobster" and other foreign criminals who intend to rig a presidential election. Their methods will be undetectable, so losing campaigns will be written off as having been run by incompetents. But when Justice exports the Wisconsin data for Sharpe, the European perps are still monitoring the computer, so they know someone could be on to them. Sharpe is sharp, so he knows that whoever is behind this is dangerous. Indeed, there are enough murders, tension, and fast pacing to check this story off as a thriller. Readers likely won't find many surprises, though, as the plot follows a predictable path. And while Sharpe isn't dull, he's no superstar either. He's just a good guy who gets the job done. Enjoyable, timely, and realistic.

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