The People's Choice: A Novel

When conservative President-elect MacArthur Foyle dies in a freak accident four days after the election, it seems as if the next leader of the United States will be his running mate, Ted Block, whose frequent verbal mishaps are no doubt intended to remind readers of some vice-presidential figure or other (wink, wink). But one electoral representative from Michigan, Dorothy Ledger, sets off a wild chain of events when she innocently asks about some procedural rules....

Veteran TV political correspondent Jeff Greenfield has pulled off the seemingly impossible task of making one of the most arcane components of the American political system, the Electoral College, the center of a genuinely entertaining novel. Some of the fun, of course, stems from the "guess who" quality of many of the political characters, but the scrappy, improvised team assembled by Dorothy and her friends also provides much fun.