American Values
About this ebook
America in the Fall of 1963. The aging “Big A” has been President since he beat Roosevelt in 1932 and passed the Defense of American Values Act to establish his dictatorship.
Thirty years on, the United States is locked in a war to conquer South America. Racial minorities are persecuted, homosexuals killed, and African Americans have disappeared from public view. The country is worn-out and dilapidated, and people wait to see who will succeed the Old Man. In high places, Nixon and the Kennedys maneuver against each other under the watchful eye of J. Edgar Hoover.
Harry Bennet is a foreign correspondent for the Manchester Guardian, posted in Washington and treading warily in the political minefield. He is helped by his best friend, Jeb Lyman, but it is a dangerous friendship since Jeb is a high official in the feared General State Police and deeply implicated in the politics of the regime. Yet Harry has to trust him to protect the woman he loves, Maria, whose racial ancestry may not stand up to investigation.
Harry learns of a mystery patient secluded in one of Washington’s hospitals. Following up the lead takes him across the decaying landscape of an oppressed America to Chicago, Las Vegas, Louisiana and Texas.
Ultimately his investigations embroil him in a murderous conspiracy to inherit the Presidency and he finally obtains an answer to the terrible secret hidden behind the public face of American Values.
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About the author
Jim Williams first hit the news when his early novels had the uncanny knack of coming true. The Hitler Diaries was published nine months before the celebrated forgery came out in 1983. Farewell to Russia dealt with a nuclear disaster in the Soviet Union months before the Chernobyl disaster. Lara's Child, his sequel to Doctor Zhivago, provoked an international literary scandal and led to his being a guest speaker at the Cheltenham Festival. Scherzo, a witty and elegant mystery set in eighteenth century Venice, was nominated for the Booker Prize. All of his fiction has been published internationally. American Values is his fourteenth novel.
Praise for Jim Williams' previous books -
The Hitler Diaries "...steadily builds up an impressive atmosphere of menace." - Times Literary Supplement
Scherzo
"Sparkling and utterly charming. Devilishly clever plot and deceitful finale." - Frances Fyfield - Mail on Sunday
Recherché
"A skilful exercise, bizarre and dangerous in a lineage that includes Fowles' The Magus." - Guardian
The Strange Death of a Romantic "...seriously good...technically brilliant...constantly suggestive... dreamy but sinister glamour." - Times Literary Supplement
From the author:
I was born in Oldham, England, the son of a coal miner and a cotton mill worker and grew up in circumstances that would today be considered poor. However I had loving parents and benefitted from a good education.
I have a degree in law and sociology and speak French, German and Spanish and have a smattering of other languages. Since 1970 I've been a qualified barrister, though I no longer practice. I am a Fellow of the Indian Society of Arbitrators, a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators and the founder and a fellow of the Institute of Applied Charlatanry. One of these qualifications is entirely worthless and I leave you to guess which.
The most important fact in my life is that I have had a long and loving marriage to a wonderful wife, and my grown-up family still gather with us most Sundays for a family dinner.
I seem to have a happy, easy-going nature and I take a great deal of pleasure in ordinary things such as walking or gardening. My wife and I enjoy theatre, ballet, opera, paintings and dancing at every possible opportunity.
