In his afterword, Charles McCarry swears this novel isn't meant to be about any real-life politicians at all, but readers may be forgiven if the character of a philandering governor (who avoided getting drafted and sent to Vietnam) on a fast track to the presidency sounds familiar. The novel's premise is so wildly outrageous--enterprising Soviet intelligence officers find a bright young college student and groom him for the White House--and yet McCarry makes it sound so plausible within the context of the story (not least of all because Jack Adams, the man in question, is so power-hungry that his participation in the scheme makes perfect sense). It's a lot like The Manchurian Candidate; you want to keep going just to see how far the premise can go, and how McCarry will manage to set things right in the end.Lucky Bastard is a bit more farcical than the other McCarry novels I've read so far, but it's still tremendously entertaining.
