CONFLICT OF INTEREST

What can you say about a Washington novel with a lost-poet, Mozart-loving investigative reporter, middle-aged, cooling his first heart attack, and out chasing his first Pulitzer by nailing a scandal on the alcoholic Speaker of the House through a newsleak wrung from the Speaker's wife while in bed with her? This turns out to be true even if sleazier scandals bloom from the sheets which can't be revealed. Especially since the conflict of interest includes a simultaneous affair with the reporter's publisher's sexpot daughter? And when the naked reporter has to hide in a bedroom closet while the President himself puts the make on the Speaker's wife? And the Speaker then turns over tapes to the reporter which can hang the President not only as a boudoir failure but a stock manipulator? If it's all penned by Les Whitten, who shares Jack Anderson's Washington byline, you can prefigure a certain commercial exposure.