The Last President

by Michael Kurland

Set in an alternative reality where "All the President's men" do not get caught at Watergate, this "shockingly believable" novel presents the frightening scenario of what could happen if a powerful but paranoid American chief executive goes out of control. "—The dirty tricks have just begun; rape, murder, plot and counterplot...are nothing to this imperial President..."—Publishers Weekly. "[T]he authors have brought a chilling sense of reality to their fast-paced, smoothly-written thriller. It may be fiction, but it is close enough to fact to be genuinely terrifying."—The Miami Herald.

Genres: Alternate History, Thriller, Science Fiction

400 pages, Paperback

First published March 22, 2013

About the author

aka Jennifer Plum

Michael Kurland has written many non-fiction books on a vast array of topics, including How to Solve a Murder, as well as many novels. Twice a finalist for the Edgar Award (once for The Infernal Device) given by the Mystery Writers of America, Kurland is perhaps best known for his novels about Professor Moriarty. He lives in Petaluma, California.

Reviews

[Allen McDonnell · Rating 3 out of 5]

Strong start

This AH novel started strong, but somewhere around half way through it lost steam and the characters shifted from complex to cardboard. I did finish the novel, but with its obsessive focus on Washington D.C. to the exclusion of how any non-political people reacted to events lost my interest. The grammar and structure are excellent, the pacing was very good, but the characters were boring and predictable after the second chapter.

[Michael Mallory · Rating 4 out of 5]

This fast-paced, suspenseful thriller is built around the alternative-history notion that the Watergate burglars were never caught, Richard Nixon was never threatened with impeachment, and he never resigned (and while the president in the book is not named and is simply called "The President," it's perfectly clear who he is). The paranoiac, Constitution-denying President's quest to become the permanent leader of the U.S. involves everything from common, ordinary lies and dirty political tricks to personally taking over the military, cancelling elections, establishing modern concentration camps for "enemies," and outright murder. Meanwhile, a disparate group of high-ranking military officers, senators, journalists, and White House insiders acting as double agents, try to figure out how to stop him. Yes, it's satire of the darkest kind--the kind that is not designed to make you laugh--but authors Kurland and Barton keep the political shenanigans just plausible enough to seem like they could happen, even though a few are extreme...at least they must have seemed so in the 1980s, when the book was originally published. Read today, at a time national politics have devolved into a kind of open Roman gladitorial combat-cum-lying contest, where no stoop is too low in the quest for ultimate power, the book is horrifyingly prescient and timely.

[Chris Oakley · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fascinating and at times outright scary parable of how the Watergate scandal could have spiraled out of control.

[Yosef Shapiro · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was written a few years after the Watergate scandal brought down Nixon. Although never mentioned by name in the book, the president in this book is clearly Nixon . The story starts out fine . But , the authors take it a bit too far. I think that the second half if the book has an implausible scenario.

[Dustin · Rating 5 out of 5]

This one was scary. It was scary because of how real it sounded. take out the fake "nixon" and put in the orange 45 and this becomes very sobering.

[Nicholas Finch · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is shockingly, terrifyingly believable!

A great take on ‘an alternative America’!

Really, really good, gripping, and exciting stuff here.

[Pooch · Rating 5 out of 5]

Eerily prescient of current personalities.
Good pacing.
Enthralling.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

Imagine if Nixon was not impeached and his paranoia came to full maturity. If you want to imagine such a horrendous world, read this book. Kirkland presents a fairly plausible scenario while capturing Nixon's underlying mania (the reader of this audio book really gets it right) and the inanity of the yes-men who feed Nixon's paranoia. The plot is pretty straightforward and the characters are a bit cardboard - except for Nixon. If you like alternate histories, this is worth a try.

[Mary]

Written in 1980 but you'd think he wrote it last year-eerily prescient.