The Seersucker Whipsaw
by Ross Thomas
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Clinton Shartelle doesn't seem like a good choice to run a political campaign in Albertia. For one thing, he's American, and Albertia is a small coastal republic in Africa, about to be cut loose from the English Crown. For another, Shartelle is Southern and fiercely proud of it, and his ideas about racial politics veer unpredictably from progressive to rigidly old-fashioned. But Shartelle is the best, and the political future of Albertia is too important to be left to anyone else. If history show more is any indication, this first fair election will probably be the country's last. Rich natural resources make it attractive to businessmen on both sides of the Atlantic, opening Albertia up to political corruption. For his part, Shartelle is hired to make sure that a British industrialist's favored candidate wins the presidency. But the opposition is backed by the CIA, for whom murder is just another political tool. show lessTags
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Spoilers, spoilers, spoilers:
This was one of those books. It was fun to read but I kept expecting really bad things to happen and they didn't, and I expected it to be a negative book & it wasn't. Mostly it was a sweet love story, and a character study of a completely unbelievable character. perhaps this is why I used to like Thomas.
This was one of those books. It was fun to read but I kept expecting really bad things to happen and they didn't, and I expected it to be a negative book & it wasn't. Mostly it was a sweet love story, and a character study of a completely unbelievable character. perhaps this is why I used to like Thomas.
Some American flacks go to an African country on the eve of independence to run an election campaign. It's all fun and games, until suddenly it isn't.
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Author Information
43+ Works 4,315 Members
Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- The Seersucker Whipsaw
- Original publication date
- 1967
- People/Characters
- Clinton Shartelle; Peter Upshaw
- Epigraph
- Confound their politics / Frustrate their knavish tricks... — Old Song
Whipsaw (hwip’so) v.t. 1. to cut with a whipsaw, hence, 2. to defeat or get the best of (a person) two ways at once, as in faro, by winning two different bets in a single play. — Webster’s New World Dictionary of th... (show all)e American Language - Dedication
- To Harriet
- Blurbers
- Hughes, Dorothy B.; Lehman, David; MacDonald, John D.; Ambler, Eric; O’Brien, Geoffrey; Manning, Margaret
Classifications
Statistics
- Members
- 109
- Popularity
- 296,854
- Reviews
- 2
- Rating
- (4.21)
- Languages
- English, German
- Media
- Paper, Audiobook, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 15
- ASINs
- 5
