About a month ago I received an email from a gent named Rusty Wornom, wondering if we had ever met. More specifically, wondering if we had ever met at a sci fi convention in Baltimore. Having no memory of ever meeting Rusty or attending a sci fi convention, I could not in good conscience conjure any sparks of an acquaintanceship. However, I did encourage him to read The Coup, and lo and behold, he did. And although the book is not fresh enough for him to write about in The Richmond Times-Dispatch, where Rusty reviews books, he did write about it on his website:
So I just finished his 2007 novel, The Coup. Unbelievably, the blurbs on the dust jacket and on Jamie’s website get it right — this is a biting, yet all too possible, satire on Washington politics and the power of public perception, and it has not received the attention it deserves.
Imagine a President who is a cross between George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, and imagine a Vice President with the smarts and charm of Al Gore and the ruthless tenacity of Dick Cheney, and you would have the Presidential pair in Malanowski’s The Coup. Godwin Pope, the VP, is sick of the President’s good ol’ boy, philandering ways. Almost by accident a plot forms in his mind — a viable way to move Jack Mahone out of the White House so Godwin can slide on in.
The plot is full of wry twists, and Malanowski’s portrait of a conniving, yet thoroughly likable VP is the anchor of the novel. You don’t want to like this bastard, but you do — especially when he falls in love with a journalist, uses her to move his plan forward, yet still quotes Marlowe in a love note: “Come with me and be my love.”
My favorite image: the denouement in the Oval Office. Read it — I won’t spoil it. But the image is rich and precisely perfect. My favorite line: Darkness fell on Washington, and like Dracula’s little children of the night, the pundits came out to feed on the weak and dying.