PRIMARY STORM

During the first-in-the-nation primary, an apolitical federal retiree is targeted in tiny Tyler Beach, N.H.

Clearly, person or persons unknown mean to do serious harm to the former Defense Department VIP and current backwoods nonentity-by-design Lewis Cole (Buried Dreams, 2004, etc.). Certain he’s done a first-rate job of rusticating himself, Lewis is unhappy when a Secret Service agent with a kit-full of mysterious questions tracks him to his lair. He’s even unhappier when it turns out that the agent is both bogus and dead and his corpse is deposited on the Cole doorstep with malice aforethought. Lewis has already spent time in the local jail suspected of attempting to assassinate leading presidential contender Senator Jackson Hale. Lewis a terrorist? Well, the bullets that narrowly missed Sen. Hale were fired from his Ruger .357, the revolver found at the scene with Lewis’s fingerprints. How has Lewis, columnist for the inoffensive monthly magazine Shoreline, managed to boost himself into the number-one spot on a deadly enemies list? Maybe his college sweetheart has something to do with it—the college sweetheart with a terrific shot at becoming the nation’s next First Lady.

DuBois keeps everything deft and literate until the ending, as wild and wooly as you’d expect from the premise.