Go ahead! Suspend disbelief. It's not often you find a five hundred page novel that you can read in a day but I did. It may surprise you to know that the author of this political thriller is the same man who brought peace to our hearts with "This Tender Land." In fact, it was only in passing, while William Kent Krueger was speaking to a standing room only crowd at the Southwest Florida Reading Festival (could that only have been two months ago?) that he mentioned his foray into suspensedom. It was an afterthought, as if he might be embarassed by this stand alone coming on the heels of the successful Cork O'Connor mysteries.
The awful title is "The Devil's Bed," but don't let that deter you. The prologue is cringingly violent so move on quickly to chapter one and get immersed in the Barbara Walters interview of President Clay Dixon and his wife Kate. Dixon's handlers are concerned. Kate doesn't seem like herself, in fact she's distanced herself from her husband both physically and emotionally lately and the re-election campaign is about to go into full swing. Without Kate's solid backing, advisors fear that Dixon will lose support in the heartland.
Back on his ranch in Minnesota former VP and devoted father to first lady Kate Dixon, Tom Jorgenson set out for his pre-bedtime ramble, driving his tractor to the edge of his property to get a better look at the full moon. He never made it. How a man with Tom's experience and expertise managed to fall off the tractor and under the wheels seemed suspicious to only one curious CIA operative, Bo Thorsen. The first lady was on the next flight to Minnesota to sit a vigil at her dad's hospital bed, her absence from the White House and Clay's decision not to follow her, noted by political insiders.
I just love novels that have you wondering if there's ANYone you can trust. Krueger's plot may once have seemed far-fetched but nothing should surprise us anymore, right? As Thorsen, an old friend of the Jorgenson's through Tom's sister, is put in charge of the first lady's detail, he senses more and more pieces that just don't fit. Bo comes to believe that what happened to Tom was no accident and that Kate, too, might be in danger. But his burgeoning attraction to the first lady is impossible to keep under wraps, making his impartiality suspect.
Meanwhile, back in DC, the president is stymied in fulfilling his initially liberal agenda by the sudden death of his most trusted ally and by the aggressive and unwelcome counsel of his father, Senator William Dixon, a ruthless Washington power broker who's never really seen eye to eye with his son. Will President Dixon sell his soul for re-election even if it means losing Kate? And will a haunting incident from Kate's past take her down along with those she loves?
This rip-roaring, fast-paced novel delves into obsessive love, child abuse, unbridled ambition, and back-room deal making whose origins date back to the end of World War II. Every time you set the book aside for just a moment to take a breather and opine "that would never happen," think again.
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