Devereaux Page, Princeton, Wall Street and Horse Shows, is chosen by the Mafia to run as their citizen candidate as the next Mayor of New York. ""You know it's a fucking exciting idea."" By the time Hatch is through with it you'll be firmly convinced that it isn't since he has recycled this from a lot of used items in the news which however true and dispiriting are not quite as dull as he manages to make them seem the second time around. True, there are a few incidents which are not quite borrowed -- the death of Page's ex-wife, good for his image; his affair with a Mafia fingerman's daughter -- bad for the same; his assassination in Madison Square Garden -- which might make you think you're reading a novel but the rest is just wadded with excelsior, whether it's Lindsay and his ""plain"" wife Mary or Rockefeller or Badillo or all the grievances taking place today articulated in Page's 213 point ABC speech from A for Aged to W for Welfare. The only ecologically sound idea is the possibility of having a ""government by minimemo"" which at least would guarantee less for that shredder. (In its spare time it could chew up some of the 25,000 first printing -- unless the publisher's equally ambitious promotion outlay gets rid of it.)