Seth Margolis
has written eight books, and his latest, Presidents’
Day will released next month, in February 2017. This is a story of
political intrigue that is particularly timely. One of the world’s wealthiest
men wants to rig the US election for President. Does that ring a bell? However,
rather than run for office himself, Julian Mellow wanted to stay in the
background where he had spent most of his life. Meanwhile, he had made millions
on a deal five years earlier as the result of insider trading, and when that
was discovered, Mellow managed to hang the blame on his longtime protégée, Zach
Springer. Zach was terminated from Mellow’s finance firm, forced to cough up
almost all of the money he had earned during his years in Mellow’s company, and
been banned from working in the financial industry forever.
And Zach could
not let it go. He was determined to catch Mellow in some illegal act, and he
was obsessed with following Mellow’s every move. As the result of this
obsession, his relationship with his fiancée was on the rocks. Only Zach’s
maniacal focus led him to uncover Mellow’s plot to win the White House through
his control of Senator Harry Lightstone. Lightstone didn’t want the job of
President, but Mellow blackmailed him into running for the office by threatening
to reveal his sexual proclivities. Still, Lightstone was a long shot and Mellow
was known never to bet on a loser.
It was specifically
the death of Mellow’s son Matthew some years earlier in the political backwater
of the small African country of Kamalia for which Mellow was seeking revenge. A
US President could bring an end to he regime that had murdered his son. Matthew,
unlike Springer, had been one who wanted nothing to do with his father and had
literally gone to the end of the earth to get away from his influence and
control. Margolis skillfully surrounded his main characters with a solid cast,
including Matthew’s fiancée, a native Kamalian, Sophie DuVal, a former French
fashion model, and Mellow’s hatchet man, Billy Sandifer, the scariest of
psychopaths.
Margolis did a
great job of tying the plots together in a believable sequence. The plot is not
too complex, but it kept me guessing. Do the good guys always win? Not
necessarily, and you’ll have to read this one to get the answer. I’ve already
downloaded Margolis’ prior book The
Semper Sonnet. ECD already wrote a less than stellar review of that one,
but I plan to get to that one soon.
