Jackson; A Novel

New York: Bantam Books, 1997. First Printing [Stated]. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. Michael Dudash (Jacket illustration). [8],421, [3] pages. Some decorative illustrations. Inscribed by the author on the title page. Corners of several pages creased. Minor edge soiling. Max Byrd was born in Atlanta, Georgia and now lives in northern California. He was educated at Harvard and at King's College, Cambridge, England. He has taught English at Yale and the University of California, Davis, though he left academia some time ago to become a full-time writer. During his teaching years he published a number of scholarly books and articles about 18th-century literature. In 1980 he began to write detective novels. The first was called California Thriller and won the Shamus Award for best paperback original of the year. This was followed by Finders, Weepers and Fly Away, Jill, all featuring the same hardboiled private eye, Mike Haller. Later came Target of Opportunity, and Fuse Time, the research for which led him to take a brief course in the California Highway Patrol Bomb Squad School. He then turned to historical fiction. Derived from a Kirkus review: Byrd's latest is a superior novel--lusty and lively in its view of the American political scene, circa 1828, yet keenly aware of the underlying issues gripping the nation. As Andrew Jackson squares off against incumbent President John Quincy Adams, having won the popular vote but lost the electoral vote in 1824, the split between eastern elitism and western democracy seems more pronounced than ever. David Chase, has been tasked to do an ``honest'' biography of Jackson, although the anti-Jackson sentiments of his patron are no secret. Chase can't seem to put pen to paper before his patron comes to Washington and puts him on the stage to Nashville. There, he meets Old Hickory, whose right-hand man allows him to become part of Jackson's entourage, until a long-kept secret about youthful, adulterous indiscretions by the candidate's wife threatens to come to the surface. The writer instantly becomes persona non grata . He tracks down the letters that will undo Jackson--and then has to make the painful decision about whether to use them. The result is a truly, and substantially, entertaining tale.