The Vertical Smile By Richard Condon

“If called I will respond. If nominated, I will accept. If drafted I shall run. If elected I shall serve. And from the ramparts of a just democracy, defending law and order, I will fight Mao, I will fight Fidel, I will fight the memory of Ho Chi Minh and I will fight the uppityness of the American negro.’ – DUNCAN ‘FUNKY DUNC’ MULLIGAN. There were those that claim that Richard Condon is the most underestimated contemporary American novelist; there are others who are convinced that he is the most outrageous. Now, the author of Mile High and the Manchurian Candidate has exploded with a passionate, outrageously funny social satire on an obsessed America. When Duncan Mulligan, blue-jawed Wall Street lawyer, whose only qualification for the White House is his sense of conviction he ought by rights to be there, is put up for President, no one realises that his vastly wealthy widowed mother-in-law’s sexual ambitions will threaten the course of American history. Ada Harris merely wants to enjoy a passionate Indian Summer love affair with Osgood Noon, the altruistic tycoon – in this democratic age every bit as much a privilege of the rich and powerful as everyone else – but this scandal (if it is computed by the hard-nosed political manipulators) could harm Dunc’s chances