Wet Work
by Burton Hersh
Wet Work picks up where Hedge Fund left off on the exploits of the Landau family Michael, the narrator and lawyer son, is excited by his chance to plead a momentous case before the U.S. Supreme Court. Immediately afterwards he finds himself lured into a fishing expedition in Costa Rica by his astute Comanche brother-in-law, Sonny (Buffalo Hump) a lieutenant colonel and a seasoned scout with U.S.Army Intelligence. Once in San Jose, Sonny enlists Michael to strike up an acquaintanceship with Staniford Murtha, an unscrupulous CIA dropout our government suspects of fomenting a revolution against the progressive government in Costa Rica so that U.S. mining interests can grab off and exploit gold and diamond-mining properties. Suddenly, issues revolving around climate change and the environment weigh heavy for Michael, Sonny, and the natives of San Jose. Murtha and his backers are relentless in their ambitions; To get clearance to grab the Central American mines they are plotting to tip the U.S. Supreme Court by taking out a faltering old liberal, Grover -- "Lefty" -- Stynhenge by corrupting his hefty, self-serving latest wife so that the Court's conservative majority can clear the way. Michael and Sonny barely arrive in time to intervene and provoke the thrilling finale. So you think you've got climate change worries?
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English
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Author Biography
Since graduating from Harvard College with high honors, Burton Hersh has adroitly sidestepped regular employment and persevered throughout a long and frequently tumultuous career as an independent writer. Following a six-year stint as a Fulbright Scholar and military translator in Germany, he returned to New York in the sixties to more than a decade as a successful magazine article writer. These easy-going editorial years -- in a better literary America -- were punctuated by the 1968 publication of Hersh's first novel, The Ski People (McGraw Hill). Hersh's persistent interest in contemporary American history led to the 1973 appearance of The Education of Edward Kennedy (Morrow), which quickly established itself as the standard work on the embattled liberal senator. The Shadow President (Steerforth Press) appeared in 1997, a universally acclaimed follow-up volume about Kennedy's later career. Also offered by Morrow, The Mellon Family, came out in 1978, was a Book-of-the-Month-Club selection and, like The Education, wound up among the top fifty books in sales in the year it came out. Most of Hersh's nineteen eighties went into the exhaustive interview and research requirements which were to generate The Old Boys (Scribner, 1992).
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