The Fourth K
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
A new Kennedy has been elected president. A man who has inherited all the good looks, wealth, and youthful idealism of his famous uncles. He is Francis Xavier Kennedy - and suddenly the old dynastic dream of a better America again seems possible.
But the energetic new president is also haunted by the darker side of the Kennedy legacy - a legacy of tragedy that he may be powerless to escape.
When his daughter is kidnapped by terrorists, President Kennedy is forced to make desperate decisions. As his violent reprisals take effect, the world holds its breath.
A compelling, prescient and engrossing novel from the author of The Godfather.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The latest from the author of The Godfather is a surefire success, a political novel that starts with a terrorist assassination of the pope on Easter Sunday, a deed that sends global aftershocks to jolt the power strongholds around the world, from the palace of the sultan of Sherhaben to the White House. The U.S. president is charismatic Francis Xavier Kennedy, scion of the famed and ill-fated clan. Still mourning his dead wife, Kennedy turns his energies to the country's betterment, forging an idealistic ``new social contract.'' But Kennedy is also a target of the terrorists, whose mentalities the novel deftly probes: Romeo, a ``Christ of Violence,'' needs to atone for his pampered upbringing; Yabril, a fierce Arab, privately thirsts to smite--like the angel Azazel--the president's daughter Theresa. After an appalling crime is committed, Kennedy coldly vows to bomb Sherhaben off the map, despite the American fortunes invested there. His cabinet and the wily, aged members of the Socrates Club--who control grain, real estate, oil, the media and Congress--plot to impeach him. Random acts of violence by young Americans (e.g., naive MIT scientists who plant a mini-atom bomb in Manhattan) enliven and multiply the dangers. Within the male power hierarchy, capable women like vice-president Helen Du Pray calculate their moves. Astute characterizations, vivid drama and Puzo's shrewd analyses of the paradoxes of evil detonate a top-notch thriller.
