SOURCE: "Fat Cats in the Driver's Seat," in The New York Times Book Review, February 11, 1990, p. 34.

In the review below, Blount finds Emperor of America not representative of Condon's usual fiction.

The imminent legacy of Reaganism: an America governed so effectively by fat cats and image-mongers that the Constitution is abandoned, the District of Columbia is obliterated by a private-sector nuclear device, royalty is instituted and the figurehead chief of state is Caesare (Chay) Appleton, a Reaganesque and Ollie Northern hero of the Nicaraguan Conflict, whose trademark is a homburg hat worn—even into battle—sideways.

Richard Condon has a new novel, Emperor of America. Its premise is the above, all of which I buy, except for the hat.

In my view, a popularly tenable vision of national Republicanism as both ludicrous and menacing is at least 10 years overdue. And who better to provide such a vision than...