THE KERRY KILCANNON POLITICAL FICTION TRILOGY
by Richard North Patterson 

1.           NO SAFE PLACE (1999) - Running for president in the year 2000, Kerry Kilcannon, a die-hard liberal senator from New Jersey, is doing well in the Democratic primaries. Twelve years earlier his brother was assassinated during his own bid for the Democratic nomination. Kilcannon's views make him unpopular with his primary opponent and militant abortion-rights supporters and pro-gun lobbyists. With the California primary approaching, the pressure for votes is on as Kilcannon, living in the shadow of his brother, tries to reconcile with the extremists. Through flashbacks to Kilcannon's childhood, the reader can easily identify the reasons the candidate feels so strongly about issues of domestic violence, gun control, and women's rights. FIC Patterson

2.          PROTECT AND DEFEND (2000) - A newly elected president faces the unexpected chance to nominate a new chief justice of the Supreme Court. His first choice is a nationally respected Court of Appeals judge, a woman whose nomination faces two serious obstacles: a long-held personal secret; and the prospect that a volatile abortion case- a trial pitting a 15-year-old girl against her pro-life parents- will come before the court. And the Senate majority leader is determined to thwart the president's nomination for reasons that cross the boundary between the political and the personal. As these stories intertwine, building in complexity and suspense, Patterson gives us the resounding clash of competing ambitions between the president and the majority leader; the equally momentous collision of science and culture in the courtroom; and, in an unprecedented novelistic depiction of the legal process from the perspective of the judge rather than the lawyers, a revelation of both how the judicial system works and how it intersects with politics, for better or for worse. FIC Patterson

3.          BALANCE OF POWER (2004) - In Balance of Power, Patterson confronts one of America’s most inflammatory issues–the terrible toll of gun violence. Following a massacre of innocents in a lethal burst of gunfire Kilcannon vows to eradicate gun violence and crush the most powerful lobby in Washington–the Sons of the Second Amendment (SSA). Allied with the President’s most determined rival, the resourceful and relentless Senate Majority Leader Frank Fasano, the SSA declares all-out war on Kerry Kilcannon, deploying its arsenal of money, intimidation, and secret dealings to eviscerate Kilcannon’s crusade–and, it hopes, destroy his presidency. This ignites a high-stakes game of politics and legal maneuvering in the Senate, the courtroom, and across the country, which the charismatic but untested young President is determined to win at any cost. But in the incendiary clash over gun violence and gun rights, the cost to both Kilcannon may be even higher than he imagined. And others in the crossfire may also pay the price: the idealistic lawyer who has taken on the gun industry; the embattled CEO of America’s leading gun maker; the war-hero senator caught between conflicting ambitions; the female senator whose career is at risk; and the grief-stricken young woman fighting to emerge from the shadow of her sister, the First Lady. The insidious ways money corrodes democracy and corrupts elected officials . . . the visceral debate between gun-rights and gun-control advocates . . . the bitter legal conflict between gun companies and the victims of gun violence . . . a ratings-driven media that both manipulates and is manipulated – make for an engrossing, epic novel that moves the reader with its force, passion, and authority. FIC Patterson

This bibliography is being funded through the Metrowest Massachusetts Regional Library System.

12/9/2008 ejw
Newton Free Library
Newton, Massachusetts