The Coup: A Novel

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.