Split Thirty

by Michael Davidow

For the second installment of his acclaimed Henry Bell trilogy, author and lawyer Michael Davidow sends his band of god-soaked advertising men into the most famous political campaign of all time: Richard Nixon’s run for the presidency in 1972, the epoch-making year of the Watergate scandal.

Newly divorced from his wife, Henry Bell makes his way east, gets hired to handle New York finances for his party’s nominee, and is soon juggling stacks of cash, secret videotapes, and the attention of too many plain-clothes cops. Entrusted with the delivery of illegal funds to Washington, D.C., he also gets double-crossed by a group of conservative businessmen he did not even know he was working for. And his only means of escape entails destroying all he holds dear.

His oldest son is missing in Viet Nam. His friend Bert Kahn is sneaking pictures of the godhead into television spots for the Democrats. His friend Chandler Peterson is laundering campaign contributions with help from hippies. And from Madison Avenue to Universal City, from San Diego to Capitol Hill, and from the Central Park lagoon to an abandoned quarry in Rutland, Vermont: all these worlds collide on a moonlit night under marble stone, for Bell himself to meet his maker on the cold gray banks of the Hudson River.

America changed forever with this election. SPLIT THIRTY shows why.

244 pages, Paperback

First published January 16, 2013

About the author

Michael Davidow was born in Boston and raised in Manchester, New Hampshire. He graduated from the Johns Hopkins University and the University of Michigan School of Law. After working in both Boston and Washington, D.C., he returned to New Hampshire, where he practices criminal defense. He and his wife Catherine have one son.

Reviews

[Konrad Kayne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Davidow has captured the American political and cultural landscape of the early 1970s,with a tightly written story.

Exciting read.

[James Clark · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am currently reading it. I like it. Well written,well thought out.

The 70s...I lived through it (remember quite a bit of it).Reading this is like time travelling.

I may have known Henry Bell.

[Chris Casko · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a very well-written, interesting book. I thoroughly enjoyed all of the characters, the interesting plot, and the twists and turns. Excellent debut.

[Catherine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dostoevsky meets Madison Avenue.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

A compelling read. The story draws you in as it progresses. Great character development of Henry Bell. I found myself really caring about him the more i learned about him.

[Jak60 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Spilt Thirty is the second instalment of the Henry Bell project; I reviewed the first one, Gate City, on goodreads, highlighting what I thought was the good, the bad and the ugly of the book (hich I won't repeat here, those few interested will have no problem whatsoever in finding it on gr, there are less than a handful in total...).
Split Thirty is in my view a stronger story, in so far that it has more of the "goods" and less of the "bad" and "ugly" of the former book.
Once again, the angle from which the author looks at politics is quite original compared to the standards of the genre; plus, at personal level, as a long-serving marketer, I found the numerous references to the world of advertising and of marketing in general really delicious (without mentioning that the author, despite behind a lawyer, does know the stuff he talks about....).
The prose here flows much more smoothly and the plot, while being very well conceived, remains at reasonably understandable levels.
Just a last remark: the sheer story of Split Thirty is quite independent from Gate City, so it could well be read as a stand alone book. However, the first novel is quite critical in giving all the necessary background and context for a full appreciation of the key characters' nuances. So my recommendation is to read the books in sequence.