The Fourth K Mario Puzo

You have to understand, I liked THE GODFATHER. Sure, it was a pulp novel, but it moved at a good pace and had a good feel for its characters. It was also fairly evocative of its time and place--though that is probably shaded by the fact that I saw the movie at least twenty times before reading the book, so there's going to be some crossover sentiment. I guess you could say that there was enough of the movie in the original book that I was impressed, and wanted to read some more of his work.

Well, FOURTH K isn't nearly as impressive. Maybe the reason they haven't made it into a movie is that it would be hard to pull off without looking a bit silly. This speculation on the presidency of a nephew of the three Kennedy brothers seems a bit fanciful, though I guess not all that far-fetched. Francis Xavier Kennedy still bears the childhood trauma of his uncles' assassinations, but tries to carry on the Kennedy spirit. Remember the "good" kind of liberal? Well, that upsets some Arab radicals enough to assassinate the Pope, as a distraction from the real Easter Day caper, the hijacking of the plane the First Daughter was travelling on (commercially, though first class, surrounded by Secret Service). When she gets killed execution-style, FXK decides to get radical and threaten to nuke the terrorists' host country. The emirate capitulates and surrenders the terrorists to US custody, but then a small nuke goes off in Times Square, and it becomes a question of Kennedyesque force of personality vs. "modern" terrorist realities.

The treatment is too facile, too workmanlike. Tom Clancy and THE WEST WING have brought an element of verite (or at least a strong sense of detail) to this kind of material, and Puzo can't match it. All of this may have been provocative back in 1990, but doesn't have much resonance now, given recent events. Absent that, it becomes a simple tale of Kennedy mystique and liberal politics, without contributing much to either. Not a bad book, but a fairly forgettable one, unfortunately.