BLOWBACK

This new thriller is so high concept that it might just give readers a nosebleed: picture Colin Powell meeting O.J. Simpson on the brink of nuclear war. Richard Whelan, the national security adviser, is the highest-ranking African-American in the administration of President Edgar Roswell. Following his white lover, Mary Jacobs, home from a party where they've had a loud argument, Whelan is pulled over by two white cops in an unmarked car, who proceed to insult and pistol-whip him. Then, at Mary's apartment, Whelan enters to find her dead body. He calls 911 on his cell phone, reports the killing, then gets a call from the White House summoning him to an urgent meeting. Does he say, "I'll be there as soon as I've convinced the cops that I didn't kill my girlfriend?" Not a chance: in the first of many jaw-dropping lapses of sense, Whelan rushes back to the Situation Room, where he learns that India has dropped a neutron bomb on Pakistani troops in Kashmir. As one character says to Whelan, "What I don't see is how all this fits in with your girlfriend's death." Can it have something to do with Mary Jacobs's father funneling dirty money to both President Roswell and the CIA? Will Whelan's smart friend Bettina at the State Department be able to get into his White House computer before severe blowback—"It's what happens when the repercussions of one action spin out of control," says the CIA chief? And has Denzel Washington or Samuel L. Jackson already signed to play Whelan in the film version of this highly unlikely but thrillingly fast-paced adventure? Author appearances in New York City and Washington, D.C. (Sept. 18)