MOUNTING FEARS

President William Jefferson Lee IV’s reelection campaign turns out to be just one darned thing after another.

What could possibly go wrong for Will Lee, who enters the Democratic convention enjoying a 62 percent approval rating? His loyal and talented Vice President, George Kiel, could sicken and die. The new VP he appoints, California Gov. Martin Stanton, could turn out to be divorcing (a private matter he shares with Will) and be a serial womanizer (an even more private matter he doesn’t), and his phone calls to his inamorata could be recorded and end up in the files of the National Inquisitor. Black Atlanta Mayor Henry King Jackson could withdraw from the Democratic party and announce his independent campaign for president. Charlene Joiner, the actress whose ex-boyfriend, Larry Eugene Moody, Will defended unsuccessfully years ago on charges of rape and murder, could throw herself at Will—literally, at a Democratic fundraiser, right in front of a fortuitous press photographer—in an attempt to get him to pardon Moody. Ex–CIA operative Teddy Fay, that freelance assassin of right-wing politicians who’s been repeatedly reported dead (Shoot Him If He Runs, 2007, etc.), could surface yet again in Panama. Oh, and would you believe it? On top of everything else, the Taliban could seize a nuclear device in Afghanistan, along with the codes and personnel necessary to detonate it. Will and his wife Kate, director of the post-Teddy CIA, deal with each crisis calmly, decisively and with humor.

Wildly erratic Woods’s latest won’t be news to anyone except folks who think that all presidential elections, especially if they’re fictional, have to be as exciting as the 2008 election was in real life.