Presidents’ Day

Super-rich New Yorker Julian Mellow, the ambitious villain of this melodramatic political thriller from Margolis (Semper Sonnet), believes that “Every election is stolen; it’s only a question of which thief gets away with the prize.” Mellow uses fixer Billy Sandifer for almost all his dirty work, beginning with a blackmail scheme to make Sen. Harry Lightstone, a Pennsylvania Republican, a dark horse candidate for president. Meanwhile, jobless Zach Springer, who was once Mellow’s trusted financial adviser until his boss betrayed him, obsessively tracks the man’s every move from his home on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Using Sandifer as his tool, Mellow reduces the Republican field (a fatal plane crash, a drug scandal, a murder) while dictating Lightstone’s agenda. Mellow even foments his own plans for the tiny African nation of Kamalia, where his only child, Matthew, was murdered two years earlier. Margolis spins a rather simplistic tale of wealth and power run amok. (Feb.)