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.