Hocus POTUS - Hardcover

MacPherson, Malcolm

3.2

10 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 193363328X ISBN 13: 9781933633282

Publisher: Melville House, 2007

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"Malcolm MacPherson, a former Marine in Vietnam, longtime foreign correspondent for Newsweek magazine, and the author of 12 fiction and nonfiction books, covered the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad for Time magazine in 2003. What he saw there inspired 'Hocus POTUS,' a hilarious yet passionate antiwar satire that centers on the US search for a WMD to justify invasion and a con man's ingenious plot to supply one. MacPherson's breakneck narrative—redolent of Carl Hiaasen's exuberance and Elmore Leonard's cynicism—is an irresistible portrait of greed and incompetence run amok."—Anna Mundow, The Boston Globe (August 12, 2007)

A rollicking tour-de-force black satire by a reporter who was there . . . .

What’s driving all the ultra-dedicated staffers crazy in Baghdad’s fortified American Embassy, the former palace of Saddam Hussein? Is it the stacks of Saddam’s romance novels, or the Michael Jackson outfits belonging to his son Uday, clogging up the place? The rising insurgency outside, with bombs going off everywhere? The lack of power and water, or the danger to civilians?

No. What’s bothering them is that it’s making POTUS (security shorthand for President of the United States) look bad. Where are the WMDs to justify it all?

And then there’s Rick Gannon, Ambassador Goodhair’s advisor-turned-renegade, recently imprisoned but now on the lam.

Little does the embassy staff know that Rick—along with his cohorts including a disgruntled Air National Guard pilot, a disaffected Department of Defense agent, a disgusted CNN cameraman, and a Iraqi soccer star—may have the solution to POTUS’ problem . . . .

Malcolm MacPherson is a former longtime correspondent for TIME and Newsweek magazines.

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About the Author:

Malcolm MacPherson is a journalist and author of thirteen books of fiction and nonfiction, including, most recently, Roberts Ridge, a nonfiction account of a 2002 battle in the war in Afghanistan. After serving in the Marine Corps, MacPherson was a foreign correspondent for Newsweek magazine for twelve years. In May-June 2003, covering the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad for Time Magazine, MacPherson was assigned an upstairs bedroom (and later a bunk in a shipping container behind the swimming pool) in the American Embassy (formerly the Republican Palace) in the Green Zone.

From Publishers Weekly:

This rollicking political farce from former Time and Newsweek correspondent MacPherson is set between the fall of Baghdad and the capture of Saddam. Roguish hero Rich Gannon has advised the Bremer-like proconsul in Iraq, Ambassador Taylor, that the looting is serious, that the Iraqi army shouldn't be disbanded, and that the WMD are a figment of the White House's imagination. Taylor's assistant soon has Rich on a cargo plane to remote Erbil. Gannon, ever the improviser, quickly organizes a detour to Turkey for a discrete heist—but Rich and his cohort are arrested. Held in Iraq's National Stadium, Rich & Co. plot escape and a new scheme: faking a WMD to sell to the Coalition Authority. Meanwhile, other plots are hatching in the Green Zone among the ambassador's fraying staff. MacPherson, author of the nonfiction Afghanistan report Robert's Ridge, unfurls this knowing and indignant tale with ease, setting it against the background of Iraqi woe and of nod-wink romance. The book's caper set pieces are too garish, and weak characterization fails Rich in particular. But MacPherson effectively portrays the Green Zone as a zoo of ambition, backbiting and incompetence. (July)
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