The Coup
A Novel
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- $4.99
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
A savagely funny and knowing political satire about a vice president with an irresistible itch to move up a notch.
Godwin Pope, the current vice president of the United States, is bored out of his skull. The one-time software billionaire and hyperconfident alpha male has been reduced to the most empty tasks while the administration of President Jack Mahone sinks lower and lower in the polls with every gaffe and self-generated fiasco. Into his orbit swings Maggie Newbold, the sexy fallen-star journalist with a bad habit of sleeping with her sources, who's on a rehabilitation tour with Newsbreak magazine. Pope sees in Maggie the instrument of his salvation, and he sets into motion a plot of incredible subtlety (and, he believes, untraceability) whereby the Mahone administration will be so tarred by scandal that even though the president didn't actually do anything, he'll have no choice but to resign. Leaving the chair in the Oval Office vacant for Pope's ascension, just as he deserves. Drawing on our current political climate (the incestuous relationship between the press and the politicians, government agendas driven by scandal and spin, raging ambition and toxic competition at the highest levels) while telling an unforgettable and ingeniously plotted story, The Coup is deliciously cynical, unsurpassingly witty—and dismayingly believable.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this sly Washington satire, the second novel from Playboy managing editor Malanowski (Mr. Stupid Goes to Washington), a scheming U.S. vice president sets out to "dethrone" the president. After four years in the Senate, Godwin Pope, a rich and handsome Princeton grad, decides to run for president against the incumbent, Jack Mahone, a slick, folksy former Louisiana governor who crushes him in a primary debate. In a surprise move, Jack asks Godwin to be his running mate and Godwin accepts. Soon after their victory, Godwin becomes bored and covets the top job for himself. Enter Irene Kim, a comely trade mission rep (spy?!) from China, who Godwin suspects could snare Jack in a sex scandal of impeachment proportions. The flirtatious fly in the ointment is Newsbreak journalist Maggie Newbold, a disgraced Pulitzer Prize winner struggling to expose or embrace Godwin, a brilliant manipulator who presents a delicious paradoxical choice to Maggie at novel's end. Malanowski's portrait of a master political double-dealer is as entertaining as it is scary.
