Ace in the Hole (1989)

Ace in the Hole is about the attempt by one of the main villains in the series, Sen. Gregg Hartmann (D-N.Y.) to become the presidential nominee. Hartmann has the power to manipulate the emotions, reactions and thoughts of anyone he's ever touched, provided they're within a fairly close proximity. Needless to say, this was useful as a politician; however, the price of the power is that it requires feeding on negative emotions fairly regularly, and so Hartmann manipulates people into violent acts, or into despair, to get that energy. This was a secret, largely, until this book.

The book's pretty even, for a shared-world book with a lot of authors, and the different authors' voices basically can just be attributed to the different characters' viewpoints in the world. Without the worse authors from the previous books, there aren't any egregiously bad portions, although some of them are better than others. The workings of politics in a world where there are lots of people with superhuman powers, and lots affected badly by an alien virus, were interesting, and the power-brokering behind the scenes with the real candidates (Jackson and Dukakis are featured) were pretty cool. This one was a lot of fun. ( )

The Ace in the Hole is a rumour that is running around the 1988 Democratic National Convention. Is one of the delegates a secret Ace? Well, yes, as Gregg Hartman is there. His platform is suffering because of this, and so will the victims of the Wild Card Virus if his policies are swept away.

There is enough of a problem, that the 'Judas Ace', Golden Boy, is drawn out of seclusion.

http://superprose.blogspot.com/2006/11/wild-cards-vi-ace-in-hole.html ( )