VOTE FOR QUIMBY--AND QUICK!

by Harry Miles Muheim ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 1978

Thomas Jefferson Quick, a Manhattan political consultant who has led many successful campaigns for others, decides to cash in on his skills (while avoiding the obvious rewards of looking exactly like JFK), so he abandons his three New York ex-wives and multilayered alimony payments, moving permanently to New Jersey, where he'll run for Lieutenant Governor. Quick has discovered that whomever the ballot lists below the name of the winner will himself automatically garner 86% of the winner's vote just by juxtaposition. Running as an independent and giving a $5,000 bribe to the printer of the ballot to have his name placed under Governor Quimby's, Quick does everything he can to boost Quimby's reelection. Unfortunately, Quimby dies of a heart attack when a jury finds him guilty of a $37 million fraud against the state: Quimby has had 87% of the arable land, of the state paved. And the paving contractor with whom he's in collusion is also his opponent in the gubernatorial race. Quick's new girlfriend Victoria Woodhill comes to the rescue (he found her dancing stark naked and covered with painted polkadots in the Hudson underground subway station--she's haft black, haft Kawaiute Indian): find someone else named Quimby and run him in the dead man's place, since no one in New Jersey would ever know the difference. A rebirth of the long moribund Max Shulman novel of wafty excess, ad-man ""wit,"" and coy venery, all of it struggling to maintain a storyline over an abyss of inspiration.

Pub Date: May 1, 1978

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Macmillan

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1978

Categories: FICTION