William Casey Moreton, The Greater Good

The Greater Good

William Casey Moreton

Atria, March 2004, $24.00, 352 pp.

ISBN 0743456572

The president and the vice president of the United States knew what they had to do to get elected and they gladly paid the price. During their sixth year in office Vice President James Ettinger can no longer live with the guilt so he makes a video tape and sends it to a television news producer and then sends a cryptic letter of apology to his brother. Shortly after the video tape is mailed, James is killed by skilled assassin Olin St. John who makes a clean getaway.

The people behind the assassination don't know that the vice-president recorded his dirty dealings until the tape is in the mail. Using his fianc e Megan as a pawn, they force St. John to track down the tape and kill anyone who gets in his way. While Megan is held hostage, a worker at NBC watches the tape and knows she is being hunted. She must elude the killers until she can figure out how to get the tape into the right hands so the truth will come out about the presidential election.

In the case of THE GREATER GOOD, most of the plot is laid out in the first few chapters but that doesn't detract from reader enjoyment because one key point is left out to the end but long before that the whirlwind plot draws the audience into the storyline. This is William Casey Moreton's debut novel and it is an excellent political crime thriller on a par with the works of Tom Clancy, Tom Grisham, and Dan Brown. No telling what one may find in Wal-Mart as this author will definitely be one of tomorrow's superstars.

Harriet Klausner