Roman Scumbag: Ralph Reed was a despicable political operative. Maybe that's why his first novel is so good.

• Author: Malanowski, Jamie
• Position: Dark Horse: A Political Thriller - Book review

Dark Horse: A Political Thriller

by Ralph Reed

Howard Books, 445 pp.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

They are male and female, liberal and conservative, Democrat and Republican, legislator and executive, insider and publicity hound. They are Boxer and Gingrich, Libby and Clarke, Carter and Cheney and Mikulski and Perle, and to their corpus of earnest yet cynical, idealistic yet worldly, not-all-that-bad-but-never-quite-that-good novels, please add Dark Horse by Ralph Reed, the former executive director of the Christian Coalition, running buddy of Jack Abramoff, unsuccessful candidate, consultant, and now novelist. Patriotism may be the last refuge of a scoundrel, but churning out a potboiler seems to be the last refuge of the overweeningly confident.

Dark Horse is the story of Bob Long, the governor of California and candidate for the Democratic nomination for president. With this status he is afflicted only temporarily, since his all-but-secured nomination is swiftly undone through a tricky procedural maneuver sprung after some underhanded double-dealing by his rival, whose nefariousness is signaled by making him the liberal (!) Senate majority leader (!) from New Jersey (!) and giving him the very un-Bob Longish name of Salmon P. Stanley. Skunked by Stanley, Long declines an offer to join the ticket in the second spot, and shuffles back to Cali to observe from the sidelines Stanley's struggle against his GOP rival, the incumbent vice president--and very vice presidentially named--Harrison Flaherty.

Then, something unusual happens: God tells Bob to run for president as an Independent. Or signals him. Gives him a thumbs up. A nod and a wink. Whatever--the Lord works in mysterious ways, andhere he opts against appearing as aburningbush or Morgan Freeman Jr. or any of his regular guises in favor of far subtler communication. What hap pens is that when Bob leaves the convention, he heads straight for the hospital, where his daughter is in labor. There is a complication--it's a breech birth, the baby is deprived of oxygen for a time--and Bob ends up in the chapel, where he offers God a proposition: "If you will spare my grandson's life, I will serve you for the rest of my life." As it turns out, God apparently accepts the deal. The infant recovers, and Bob concludes, as almost any of us would, that the best way to serve is to continue his campaign for the White House against that varmint Stanley and that weasel Flaherty.

What's interesting is that...