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Critics' Opinion:
Readers' Opinion:
First Published:
Aug 1998, 497 pages
Paperback:
Aug 1999, 513 pages
North Patterson uses his mastery of characterization and suspense to give us a story of startling realism and originality--an extraordinary novel of presidential politics.
In his first book since the national best-seller Silent Witness, Richard
North Patterson uses his mastery of characterization and suspense to give us a story of
startling realism and originality--an extraordinary novel of presidential politics.
In the year 2000, Senator Kerry
Kilcannon's insurgent campaign against Vice President Dick Mason has come down to the last
seven days--the time remaining until the California presidential primary. Whoever wins in
California is likely to win the Democratic nomination, a prize that the Vice President is
determined to deny Kerry at any cost. And for all the votes and enthusiasm his passion and
personal magnetism have gained him, Kerry's problems are formidable.
He is haunted by the tragedy of his older
brother, James, a presidential candidate who was assassinated in California twelve years
earlier. Kerry has stumbled in his advocacy of abortion rights, and a right-to-life
fanatic has pushed this explosive issue to the forefront by murdering three people at a
women's clinic. In addition, a journalist for a national newsmagazine is striving to
verify the lethal story that, two years ago, while still married, Kerry had a secret love
affair with Lara Costello, a reporter assigned to him on Capitol Hill. And now, even more
threatening, Kerry is being stalked by the abortion-clinic murderer himself.
This narrative is seamlessly interwoven
with scenes from Kerry's past: his youth as the son of a drunken and abusive father; his
self-image as the less-gifted younger brother of a brilliant yet distant senator; his
reluctant ascension to his brother's place; his poignant romance with Lara Costello. And
when Lara is ordered against her will to cover Kerry in California, he is forced once more
to evaluate his life, and the terrible cost of his ambition to become President of the
United States.
With rare authenticity, Richard North
Patterson depicts the world of high-stakes presidential politics on the verge of an
explosion that is as dramatic as it is thought-provoking. But No Safe Place is also a
story of people at their best and at their worst: their passions, their ideals, their
flaws. A novel that will hold the reader enthralled from the first to the last sentence.
Prologue
THE CAMPAIGN
April, the year 2000
Chapter One
At eight in the morning of his last day in Boston, Sean Burke paced out tight circles on
the corner of Kenmore Square, waiting for the abortionist, a nine-millimeter semiautomatic
handgun hidden in the inside pocket of his army jacket.
Sean knew his enemy from the demonstrations--a slight man
with brown wisps of hair and hollow cheekbones, gray soulless eyes that ignored the
pickets even when they cried out, "Don't kill me, Mommy and Daddy," in the
imagined voice of a fetus. Part of Sean prayed for him to come; that other part,
frightened and irresolute, hoped he would not. He encouraged himself by imagining the
faces of the children he would save.
He passed forty minutes this way. With each moment, Sean felt more anxious.
And then the man was there, emerging from the subway.
The abortionist's hands were in his coat ...
No Safe Place is my favorite kind of book: one that brings seemingly different characters together and shows that, lo and behold, they are not so different after all. One that illuminates the connections that the characters have, and that, ultimately, we all have... a fascinating story that urges us to remember that unless we are all safe, none of us really can be.
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