From Publishers Weekly
The latest from the author of The Godfather is a surefire success, a political novel that starts with a terrorist assassination of the pope on Easter Sunday, a deed that sends global aftershocks to jolt the power strongholds around the world, from the palace of the sultan of Sherhaben to the White House. The U.S. president is charismatic Francis Xavier Kennedy, scion of the famed and ill-fated clan. Still mourning his dead wife, Kennedy turns his energies to the country's betterment, forging an idealistic "new social contract." But Kennedy is also a target of the terrorists, whose mentalities the novel deftly probes: Romeo, a "Christ of Violence," needs to atone for his pampered upbringing; Yabril, a fierce Arab, privately thirsts to smite--like the angel Azazel--the president's daughter Theresa. After an appalling crime is committed, Kennedy coldly vows to bomb Sherhaben off the map, despite the American fortunes invested there. His cabinet and the wily, aged members of the Socrates Club--who control grain, real estate, oil, the media and Congress--plot to impeach him. Random acts of violence by young Americans (e.g., naive MIT scientists who plant a mini-atom bomb in Manhattan) enliven and multiply the dangers. Within the male power hierarchy, capable women like vice-president Helen Du Pray calculate their moves. Astute characterizations, vivid drama and Puzo's shrewd analyses of the paradoxes of evil detonate a top-notch thriller.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.
This text refers to an alternate
Hardcover
edition.
Review
“[A] CLASSIC PAGE-TURNER . . . THE FOURTH K HAS ALMOST EVERYTHING YOU LOOK FOR IN A THRILLER.”
–The Washington Post
“FAST-PACED, SATISFYING . . . FINE ENTERTAINMENT.”
–Los Angeles TimesFrom the Paperback edition.
de Mario Puzo
