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The Witch of Watergate: A Fiona FitzGerald Mystery: A Washington Media Assassin and Gossipmonger Is A Victim In An Act of Vengeance

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Overview

Fiona FitzGerald, a senators daughter turned Washington, D.C., homicide detective, is back for her fifth gripping thriller, investigating a murder with explosive consequences on Capitol Hill. When Polly Dearborn, the infamous Washington Post investigative reporter whose poison pen had destroyed many a politician's career, is found hanging from her Watergate apartment, the elite of Washington rejoice. "The Witch of Watergate" is dead! But this is no time for detective Fiona FitzGerald to celebrate. Although suicide seems logical for this lonely and miserable woman, Fiona is determined to find the truth. The Witch of Watergate is the fifth book in Warren Adlers Fiona FitzGerald series. The first mystery, American Quartet, was on the New York Times top ten crime novels of the year. Try the other Fiona mysteries: American Sextet, Senator Love, Immaculate Deception, and The Ties That Bind.

Editorial Reviews

Adler's ( War of the Roses ) uneven mystery starts off stridently, as Washington, D.C., detective Fiona FitzGerald, here in her fifth outing, is teamed with cynical rookie Charleen Davis. The two start squabbling just as soon as they are assigned the case of a Washington Post gossip writer whose apparent suicide proves to have been murder. Fiona and Charleen spar over collecting evidence from the late columnist's computer: Charleen wins the first round by enlisting computer-illiterate Fiona's help in spiriting away the hard disks. The disks contain a damning dossier on the D.C. mayor (who happens to be touting Fiona's boss as the next police commissioner) and some damaging information about the Secretary of Defense and his son. Then Fiona and Charleen battle over their differing assessments of the suspects and take turns upstaging each other. The plot is skillfully structured, but the players and the tidy, all's-well-that-ends-well conclusion ring false. (Aug.) -- PUBLISHERS WEEKLY.

Author Information

Bio of Warren Adler

Warren Adler is a world-renowned novelist, short story writer and playwright. His books have been translated into more than 25 languages and two of his novels, The War of the Roses and Random Hearts, have been made into enormously popular movies, shown continually throughout the world. Three short stories from his acclaimed collection The Sunset Gang have been adapted as a trilogy and shown on Public Television stations. The Overlook Press will publish a new novel, his 29th, in Spring 2008, and his fifth short story collection, New York Echoes will be published in late Winter of 2008 by Stonehouse Press. His play Libido is scheduled for an off-Broadway production in 2008. His stage adaptation of the novel The War of the Roses is currently being produced in Italy, Berlin, Hamburg, Prague and countries in Scandinavia. Mr. Adler is a pioneer in electronic publishing and has acquired his complete backlist and converted this entire library to digital publishing formats. As a novelist, Mr. Adler's themes deal primarily with intimate human relationships--the mysterious nature of love and attraction, the fragile relationships between husbands and wives and parents and children, the corrupting power of money, the aging process and how families cling together when challenged by the outside world. Readers and reviewers have cited his books for their insight and wisdom in presenting and deciphering the complexities of contemporary life. A product of the New York public school system, Mr. Adler graduated from Brooklyn Technical High School and New York University, where he majored in English literature. Inspired by his freshman English Professor Don Wolfe, Mr. Adler went on to study creative writing with Dr. Wolfe when he taught at the New School. He also studied under Dr. Charles Glicksburg at the New School. Among his classmates were Mario Puzo, William Styron and many other talented writers. Two collections of short stories "American Vanguard" and "Which Grain Will Grow" were published by Doubleday and represented a showcase of many young emerging authors, who like Warren Adler, won both popular and critical acclaim. "I wanted to be a novelist since I was fifteen years old," he says. "Throughout my early career, I would write from five to ten in the morning every day before going to my office, a habit that has stayed with me since." After graduating from New York University with a degree in English literature, Mr. Adler worked for the New York Daily News before becoming Editor of the Queens Post, a prize winning weekly newspaper on Long Island. His column "Pepper on the Side" became a staple of a number of newspapers in the country. During the Korean War, after basic training he was recruited by Armed Forces Press Service to serve in the Pentagon as the only Washington Correspondent for the service. His Washington by-line went all over the world and was published in every publication put out by the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force and Coast Guard. Prior to his success as a novelist, Mr. Adler had a distinguished business career. He has owned four radio stations and a TV station, has run his own advertising and public relations agency in Washington, D.C. and was one of the founders with his wife Sonia and son David of the Washington Dossier magazine. When his first novel was published in 1974, he became a full time novelist. Today, when not writing, Mr. Adler lectures on creative writing, motion picture adaptation and the future of Electronic Books. He is the founder of the Jackson Hole Writer's Conference and has been Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Jackson Hole Public Library. He is married to the former Sonia Kline, a magazine editor. He has three sons, David, Jonathan and Michael and four grandchildren and lives in New York City.

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Additional Info

Imprint

Stonehouse Press

Filesize

631.86 KB

Number of Pages

364

eBook ISBN

1590062167

Excerpt from: The Witch of Watergate by Warren Adler

THE PUNGENT AROMA of the awakening spring earth and the manure of the hundred-odd horse entries of the Middleburg Hunt Races wafted over the soft greening field. Spaces allocated to patrons of the races were filled with elaborately decorated tables, some with candelabra, crystal and silver tureens, colorful flower arrangements, linen tablecloths and exotic food concoctions.

Some were tented and served by waiters in black tie and the air was often punctuated by the sounds of champagne bottles popping. Others were merely sumptuous tailgate parties complete with full bar and more rustic food placed elegantly on checkered tablecloths.

As always, Fiona FitzGerald noted, there was less interest in the races and more in the imbibing and socializing. Chappy Chapin's bash was a case in point. There he was, ex-Ambassador to Switzerland, now a bachelor man-about-town, holding forth alongside his yellow and black antique Rolls complete with a horn that trilled. Pop Goes the Weasel on command. As a long-standing patron of the races he had a choice up-front location.

Chappy, although he did not ride, looked the part of the gentleman horseman. His tall frame was ramrod straight and his clipped moustache on a pink complexion gave him an outdoorsy look that belied his sedentary life. His relaxed hosting of this little group of ten bespoke a practiced social elegance. He wore a plaid deerstalker cap and matching cape, which, on him, looked perfectly normal.

Chappy always had a good group to the hunt races, and he was usually a patron of most of them in the Washington area. His menu was invariable, made with his own hands in his lovely house in Georgetown: spicy fried chicken, delicious syrupy baked beans and bacon, his own secret formula, and lush chocolate brownies. And, of course, pitchers of Bloody Marys, champagne and whatever else alcoholic his guests might desire.

What race is this? Harvey Halloran asked, turning casually toward the field, where a number of horses were steeplechasing around the track. Few of Chappy's guests paid any attention to the races, except to place an occassional bet with the various gentlemen bookies that collected slips near the official tent. Halloran was a lobbyist for the oil and gas industry. The other guests included a Congressman and his wife, a State Department Assistant Secretary and his girlfriend, the Peruvian Ambassador and his wife and a stockbroker and his male live-in lover. To Fiona, they were familiar Washington types, par for the course.

An invitation to one of Chappy's tailgating racing parties was a hot ticket and Fiona was often invited as Chappy's date when he didn't have a steady on his arm and she wasn?t toiling in the Eggplant's homicide vineyard.

Today she was here out of her own sheer therapeutic necessity. Things downtown were depressing. Drug gang wars and the accelerating introduction of automatic weapons had considerably raised the homicide body count, putting unbearable pressure on the entire department. A hurricane of death was sweeping through Washington and homicide was in its vortex.