A CALIFORNIA CONSPIRACY

by Richard & Arnold Grossman Lamm ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 21, 1988

The outspoken former governor of Colorado and his coauthor of 1988 (1985) team up again in a thin tale of all-out Japanese economic warfare. Someone is wiping out the keenest minds in the brain trust behind the vigorous, athletic, forward-thinking California Governor Terry Jordan. First, Jordan's workaholic chief of staff is run over while dictating memoranda and jogging at the same time. Then, Jordan's financial backer loses his brilliant computer programmer in a staged hot-tub sex-and-drug drowning. There are even a few potshots at the governor himself when he is out for one of his many running dialogues. Who would want to hurt these aerobic paragons? Well, it seems that at the end of WW II a handful of Japanese officers decided they were not going to take the outcome lying down. Having accurately predicted America's decline into a slough of narcissism, drugs, and physically fit politicians, the fanatical officers--dubbing themselves the Phoenix group--decide to storm the American economic beachheads and take their revenge commercially. Working steadily and stealthily, the Phoenix group comes to control a significant share of postwar industrial might and starts to buy up American industry with their profits--until they run into protectionist flak in a trade bill that Governor Jordan appears to be willing to sign. Banzai. Deserves to die in the primaries.

Pub Date: March 21, 1988

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: St. Martin's

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1988

Categories: FICTION