Capitol Secrets

New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1992. First Printing [Stated]. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. Herman Estevez (Jacket photograph). 24 cm, 284, [4] pages. Maureen Dean was born on October 10, 1945, in Los Angeles, California, the USA as Maureen Elizabeth Kane. She is a writer, known for Blind Ambition (1979) and The Mike Douglas Show (1961). She was previously married to Michael William Biner and George Owen. In one of her marriages, her high school sweetheart died in a car accident two years after they were married. The other was never official because she found out after the brief marriage that the football scout hadn't divorced his first wife. On Nov. 13, 1970-"Friday the 13th," Mo met John Wesley Dean III, during a trip to California looked her up on the recommendation of Rep. Barry Goldwater Jr. Two days later, John Dean asked her to spend Thanksgiving with him in the Virgin Islands, and they began a whirlwind courtship that ended six weeks later with Mo moving to Washington. He proposed, and they were married in October 1972, four months after the break-in at Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate complex. That summer of 1973, she stoically stood by her husband no matter what. Impeccably dressed, flawlessly made up, her hair pulled back into a polished bun, she mesmerized the nation with the silent vigil she kept behind her husband's witness table day after day at the Watergate hearings while his testimony brought down a President. Her presence got national attention at the time. Her best known written work is "Washington Lives," which was covered by People in 1987. The book was set in 1989 and described as a "steamy literary debut with a tale of passion on the Potomac." Derived from a Kirkus review: Second novel by the author of Washington Wives (1987), as well as MO: A Woman's View of Watergate (1975), who is the wife of Watergate whistle-blower John Dean. With her factual style, Dean delivers a likable, sexy, complex story about Capitol intrigues, this time involving murder. Multimillionaire Congresswoman Laura Christen, a widow of 46 and in her seventh term in the House, decides to take a shot at becoming Speaker of the House, the first woman ever to do so. Speakers are elected by House members, and right at the start Laura, an Independent, has a strong lock on the Republican vote and seemingly has locked up the votes of all the women Democrats. It's close, though, and incumbent Speaker Lew Ronkowski chooses to fight dirty, making sure that terrible (but unfounded) stories about Laura appear in the supermarket tabloids. At the press conference where Laura announces herself, to great applause from the press, she is approached by Jeremy Marsten, a sleazeball reporter with a letter that tells of a bastard hidden in Laura's past. But while leaving the conference, Jeremy is murdered with a bizarre superpoison injected into his neck. Dr. Penelope Krim, a monstrous syndicated gossip columnist, lifts the letter from Jeremy's body and begins her own spiteful crusade against Laura. Penelope hires Jake Alban, a down-at-heels Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter to dig up all the dirt he can find in Laura's past. But Jake has had a rich attachment to Laura since interviewing her ten years earlier and now falls for her. Meanwhile, Laura's 24-year-old daughter, Catherine ``Catsy'' Christen Braden, Laura's press secretary and the most available lady in the media corps, defends her mother by any means, including sex with the enemy. Even if Laura wins, will this mother and daughter ever come clean with each other? No-holds-barred commercial novel bent on murdering your sleep.