Former U.S. foreign service officer Eisendrath, who codrafted the U.N. Outer Space Treaty, offers a heavy-handed political parable in his second novel (after Crisis Game
). Dwight Lockwood, following the death of his sexually abusive secretary of defense father, begins to find his own political voice, first as an activist against U.S. policy in Nicaragua, a campaign he eventually parlays into a broader social action movement. That role in turn leads to the chairmanship of the International Monetary Fund, and, eventually, to his selection as the first American secretary-general of the U.N. Aided by a liberal presidential candidate reminiscent of Dennis Kucinich who somehow manages to get elected, Lockwood struggles, often ineptly, to reshape the world. (Lockwood “quips” to the Egyptian foreign minister, “Could we possibly seek a final solution to the Jewish problem?”) Having Lockwood haunted by the spirit of his late wife adds little to a book lacking in the kind of realistic detail that the author’s background suggests he could easily have provided. (Apr.)
