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Summary
Summary
Lucky Bastard is the suspenseful and hilarious story of a gifted politician with dangerous friends and a zipper problem. The author is Charles McCarry, a writer widely acclaimed for his richly perceptive novels of political intrigue. John Fitzgerald Adams, known by the voters who love him as Jack, has good reason to believe he is the illegitimate son of JFK. His goal is the same as that of any Kennedy: to reclaim the presidency . . . and enjoy as many women as possible along the way. Jack possesses an instinctual political genius, an unerring knack for charming voters and advancing his own interests. But Jack, up from poverty, cannot make it to the Oval Office without money and support. Luckily, he becomes the beneficiary of the largesse of two maverick Russians who recognize Jack's talent and invest considerable resources in his rise to power. Jack also relies on a strong-willed wife, an ardent radical who masterminds his political moves while guarding against the threat that his wild libido will destroy his career. As Jack marches toward the presidency, others who realize the truth about his sinister connections try to stop him. But will anyone believe them? Charles McCarry has long been recognized as the dean of Washington's novelists, "a magical writer, the very best in this field" (Martha Gellhorn, Sunday Telegraph). With Lucky Bastard, McCarry has written the novel of his career, a thrilling and imaginative vision of power and conspiracy in the age of Clinton.
Author Notes
Albert Charles McCarry Jr. was born in Pittsfield, Massachusetts on June 14, 1930. He enlisted in the Army, where he wrote for Stars and Stripes and edited a weekly Army newspaper in Bremerhaven, Germany. He was a dishwasher and newspaper reporter before becoming an assistant and speechwriter to Secretary of Labor James P. Mitchell. After two years, McCarry was recruited by the C.I.A. He worked for nine years as a deep cover operative in Europe, Asia and Africa.
He became an author of both fiction and nonfiction. His fiction works included Ark and The Paul Christopher series. His nonfiction works included Citizen Nader and three memoirs - two written with Alexander Haig Jr. and one written with Donald T. Regan. McCarry died from complications of a cerebral hemorrhage caused by a fall on February 26, 2019 at the age of 88.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Former CIA man McCarry (The Tears of Autumn; Shelley's Heart) is a highly skilled storytellerÄand sometime coauthor (Inner Circles, with Alexander Haig)Äwhose knowledge of agentry and Washington politics is extensive but lightly worn. His background has also given him a strong degree of cynicism, however, and that is the dominant quality of this highly readable tale. McCarry's antihero is Jack Adams, who believes he is the love child of JFK and a Navy nurse, and who is singled out by the KGB during his college days as a promising "asset"Äone, in fact, that rogue KGB man Peter believes could actually be placed in the Oval office as president. Jack is a charming fellow, a born liar but irresistibly likable, a compulsive womanizer without a thought or emotion that is not self-centered; ergo, according to McCarry, he's a master politician. With the aid of Morgan, a caricature of a leftist extremist woman of the 1960s, and boyhood buddy Larry, a college sports hero crippled by Vietnam, Jack works his way up the political ladder in his native Ohio until the top spot is within reach. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union is crumbling, the KGB is running for cover and just where do Peter's (and therefore Jack's) allegiances lie? It's a wonderfully promising premise for a thriller, and the novel moves along at a good clip. The reader is never sure, however, just how seriously McCarry intends his fable to be taken. There are elements of farcical satire at work here, some over-the-top cloak-and-dagger background that belongs in James Bond movies, some raunchy but cold-blooded sex and a windup more cynical than anything that has gone before it. It is this uncertainty of tone, wavering between acute, sophisticated observation and glib absurdity, that ultimately prevents the book from attaining the alarming power it occasionally suggests. Author tour. (July) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
Deftly written, mordantly cynical send-up of a bed-hopping Kennedyesque scoundrel, charming in his own way, who thinks he's JFK's illegitimate child and so resolves to run for the Presidency. The ninth novel from McCarry is but a small step removed from his worldly-wise eight-volume Paul Christopher spy series (Shelley's Heart, 1995, etc.). Through Dmitri, a former KGB colonel living in happy, post-Communist exile in America, we meet Jack Fitzgerald Adams, a cowardly, good-looking, sexually prodigious liar from Tannery Falls, Ohio. Recruited by the KGB while attending Columbia University during the era of the Vietnam War protests, Jack is eagerly led by Dmitri's diabolically intelligent superior, a suavely satanic übermensch known as Peter, into the kinky clutches first of radical Marxist Greta Fürst, who has torrid sex with him in public places, and then into those of brainy Harvard MBA (and secret fanatic Communist subversive) Morgan Weatherby, who has almost no sex in him at all. After Peter flashes Jack incriminating photos of his sexual exploits, Jack agrees to marry Morgan and practice law back in Ohio with his best friend, crippled Vietnam vet Danny Miller. But alas, unbeknownst to Danny, Jack had raped Danny's wife, Cindy, while Danny was overseas. Unsure whether it was Danny or Jack who got her pregnant, Cindy had aborted the fetus and has hated Jack ever since. Though Morgan wrings the truth from her, this betrayal by Jack anticipates his ever larger and more audacious acts of fraud, carelessness, and sexual license as his KGB handlers (now working for the Chinese) craft him into a populist hero for an easily seduced electorate. Nasty Kennedy-Clinton parallels abound in a ribald, snickeringly ironic political fantasy. McCarry dedicates Lucky Bastard to the late Richard Condon, whose dizzy, over-the-top social satires it resembles. (Author tour)
Booklist Review
This novel is so cynical but at the same time so wonderfully realistic and compelling. Set during the time of the Vietnam War, the novel follows a subversive organization with links abroad that is intent on recruiting from student members of the antiwar movement a potential leader for revolution against the established political order. They find just the right person in a young man named John Fitzgerald Adams, who fancies himself the illegitimate son of John F. Kennedy. John Adams, so this enemy group finds, can be totally manipulated, not only by his obsession with his presumed heritage but also by his highly active libido, and total manipulation is what they are interested in. They involve him in a long, complicated program that leads him up the political ladder to the Oval Office itself. Of course, there are hurdles along the way, and these provide the conflicts around which this very sophisticated novel turns. McCarry is as knowledgeable about fictional technique as he is about politics and diplomacy. His exploration of base human compulsions never flags as he carefully lays out an absolutely seamless plot. This is not a slick political thriller; it is a political novel done with great expertise and creativity. --Brad Hooper
Library Journal Review
Despite an unusually insistent bit of prefatory splutter about the similarity of its characters to "persons living or dead" being pure coincidence, certain recent political figures and events inevitably come to mind. Stripped of its involutions, of which there are many, this tale of intrigue is built around the adventures of John Fitzgerald Adams, self-proclaimed love-child of JFK and a high school homecoming queen. Having been handpicked and financed by a supernumerary revolutionary group with strong KGB ties, he seeks to become president of the United States in post-Vietnam War days. The book compels attentionsometimes. McCarry (Shelley's Heart, LJ 5/15/95) knows how to beat his batter to keep suspense building, and he does expose certain human foibles that are especially manifest today. But the story is too long in the telling, minor plot elements are exaggerated out of all proportion, and interest is not multiplied by endless descriptions of Adams's sexual conqueststhe so-called "lucky bastard" has the mating habits of a rabbit. Think twice before purchasing.A.J. Anderson, GSLIS, Simmons Coll., Boston (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.