It stands to reason that people will write books about political campaigns. Some who actively participate in the process write about their experiences in the belly of the beast while others, at a remove or two, dissect. I shudder at the very thought, frankly; I understand the end result of nuclear fission, too, but I don't want to know the steps you have to take to get there.

As we see in every election year, a great deal of emphasis is placed on "secrets." These usually take the form of some indiscretion in the candidate's past, and the story turns around the lengths to which the candidate or staffers will go to conceal that secret.

Lately I've read two novels based around fictional campaigns that get a good deal more murderous (and, to a lover of a good story, more interesting) than the run of the mill real-life bleepups and coverups.

The first, SMOKE AND MIRRORS, was published in 1989 by my beloved romantic suspense novelist, Barbara Michaels. It centers around a US Senate campaign in Virginia. The candidate is a grandmother who "inherited" her seat in the House of Representatives upon her husband's death and now is taking a shot at a senate seat, held for thirty-odd years by a corrupt career politician. Unfortunately, somebody who works in her campaign is trying to expose a secret her husband took to his grave, and resorts to acts of arson to try to frighten her out of the campaign; totally independent of this action, an interested party is afraid the secret will be exposed and is willing to kill to keep it buried. The writing and characterizations are wonderful, as always with Michaels (who also writes as Elizabeth Peters). Dare I say it--her sinister conservative talk show host and columnist reminds me no end of Bill O'Reilly?

The second novel, PRIMARY STORM, by Brendan DuBois, was published in 2006 and deals with a (fictional) Democratic primary in New Hampshire. Its protagonist is a retired Defense Department analyst who finds himself in a mess when somebody tries to shoot the front runner with a gun stolen from his house. I haven't quite finished the book yet. I suspect the candidate's wife is up to no good, but that's as far as I go.

The Michaels book is more detailed about how campaign staffs operate, how funds are raised (especially in those pre-Internet days), and how issues are chosen for emphasis, since it is told from the POV of a campaign worker. The DuBois book, on the other hand, has a number of fascinating characters, especially an "opposition researcher" who seems to have some very INN-teresting covert activities going on that have nothing to do with the campaign. (I gather that, with the 60 MINUTES report on Don Siegelman coming up tonight, "opposition researchers" will be of more interest than normal; they apparently dig up dirt on candidates as a paying job.)

Either way, I think I like the novelized campaigns better; they have suspense and romance, both of which seem to be in short supply in real ones.

If anybody comes looking for me, I'll be in a corner somewhere with a book.

This blog is intended to be about my greatest passion in life: books. I was one of those lucky souls whose mother read to me from the day I was born, so I have been involved in a passionate affair of the heart with books ever since. By the time I was a toddler, I had all my favorites memorized, and Mom laughs to this day about how I would sit in a toddler-sized rocking chair, rocking and "reading" aloud to myself. Sometimes I held the books right side up, sometimes upside down, but I "read" them.

Our household was a fractious one, to put it mildly, and as I grew up books became not only a passion but a refuge. I never asked for dolls or stuffed animals or clothes or any of the normal things young girls want for Christmas or birthdays; as long as I had books I was happy. I remember reading entire series of "tween" books; the Trixie Belden and Donna Parker series were great, as were two series about nurses named Cherry Ames and Kathy Martin. I did my Harlequin years as an early teen (the early ones, where nothing more than chaste kisses followed by chaste proposals of marriage and--presumably--chaste marriages followed) and was just coming of age with the 1970s "bodice rippers" of Kathleen E. Woodiwiss and Rosemary Rogers. I devoured those.

In junior high (they call that middle school now) my favorite author was Zane Grey, who wrote westerns. I fell in love with his titles at first: WILDFIRE, THE DRIFT FENCE, RIDERS OF THE PURPLE SAGE, WANDERER OF THE WASTELAND, and my favorites of them all, BETTY ZANE, THE SPIRIT OF THE BORDER, and THE LAST TRAIL, which were based on the exploits of his mother's ancestors, the pioneer Zanes who settled what are now the cities of Wheeling, West Virginia, and Zanesville, Ohio.

I pretended throughout college to be interested only in "highbrow" literature, and would have told you then that only William Faulkner was worth reading--Outgrew that when I discovered the romantic suspense novels of Barbara Mertz (aka Barbara Michaels and Elizabeth Peters), Phyllis A. Whitney, Daphne du Maurier and Mary Stewart.

Went through a phase devoted to classic detective stories, as well: A. Conan Doyle, Ellery Queen, Rex Stout, and most recently John Dickson Carr and Ellis Peters (of the Brother Cadfael books). I also have read nearly all of Patricia Cornwell's works and Ed McBain's wonderful 87th Precinct series.

Have I sufficiently bored you yet? Hopefully, in coming blogs I intend to write about individual books, series and authors who intrigue me. In any case, I'll be in a corner somewhere with a book.