The Innocent Have Nothing to Fear

In this election caper from a leading political operative and commentator, a cynical campaign manager finds his family skeletons coming out of the closet on the eve of the convention

New Orleans, July 2016: It's hot and sticky and JD Callahan is fighting the campaign of his life. His candidate, the sitting vice president, is neck and neck with an anti-immigrant, right-wing populist as the Republicans head into their first brokered convention in decades. Callahan, a New Orleans native without much affection for his hometown, is frantically trying to coordinate the convention and round up delegates when his estranged brother shows up, asks for an inconvenient favor, and threatens to reveal embarrassing family secrets if JD says no. Soon after, a series of bombs sets off a mass panic and tilts the convention toward the vice president's law-and-order opponent. As JD scrambles to contain the damage, he finds himself contending with a sexy, gun-toting local gossip columnist, an FBI agent convinced that JD is cynical enough to set the bombs himself, and a host of family secrets.

The Innocent Have Nothing to Fear is a hilarious, sharply entertaining whodunit and a knowing satire of our political culture--the perfect summer read for everyone who says he's sick to death of the 2016 campaign, but can't stop reading about it.

STUART STEVENS is the author of six previous books, and his work has appeared inThe New York Times, The Washington Post, Esquire, and Outside, among other publications. He has written extensively for television shows, includingNorthern Exposure, Commander in Chief, and K Street. For twenty-five years, he was the lead strategist and media consultant for some of the nation's toughest political campaigns. He attended Colorado College; Pembroke College, Oxford; Middlebury College; and UCLA film school. He is a former fellow of the American Film Institute. This is his second novel.