New political thriller is cautionary tale

By MELISSA GARBER Bulletin Contributing Writer

Published on February 15, 2008

What if the U.S. government could take away a person's citizenship at will, muffle the media and halt elections indefinitely? This is the world readers enter in Betsy Hartmann's latest thriller, "Deadly Election."

The idea for the book grew out of a dinner party conversation Hartmann had awhile back. When someone said that former President Nixon had used focus groups to gauge the public's reaction to the possibility of postponing an election, Hartmann, a professor and director of the Population and Development Program at Hampshire College, was intrigued.

Although she was in the process of writing a book about oil politics in central Asia, her attention shifted to what would be the crux of the book recently released by White River Press in Vermont.

"Deadly's" cast of characters includes congressional aide and single mother, Lisa Derby; Supreme Court Justice Matthew Pomeroy; grieving mother Faith Jones; and the President's closest confidante, Lyndon Tottman.

The alleged suicide of prisoner Salim Mohammed, Jones' son, in a government detention center in Nevada, sets off a chain of events that forever links the four characters.

"I wanted to spin out how this could happen, and see the key choices that would face people," Hartmann said. "It is a work of imagination, so there are liberties taken for the sake of the plot."

In "Deadly Election" the president's power-hungry right hand man, Tottman, attempts to seize control of the government and do away with elections. The president is incapacitated by alcoholism while Tottman tries to cover up his dirty work from the prying eyes of Derby, Jones, Pomeroy and their cohorts in this fight to the finish. Unanswered questions abound, with mysterious suicides, murders and conveniently timed assassination attempts. All of this to answer one question: "Who killed Salim Mohammed?"

"Betsy Hartmann has taken our darkest fears and carried them one terrifying step further," writes Michael Klare, author of "Blood and Oil," in a back-page blurb.

Hartmann will read from the book Sunday at 4 p.m. at Amherst Books in Amherst.

Nancy Drew

Hartmann's interest in suspense began early.

"I've wanted to write thrillers since I was eight," she said. "I watched a lot of detective and mystery shows and read a lot of Nancy Drew books."

Growing up in Princeton, N.J., in what she terms a political household, Hartmann's father in particular had a strong interest in New Jersey and national politics. She has dedicated "Deadly Election" to him.

Hartmann was a member of the first female class at Yale University in 1969, majoring in South Asian studies. Before going on to earn her Ph.D. in development studies at the London School of Economics and Political Science in 2003, she and her husband, James Boyce, studied village life in Bangladesh and India. Their work culminated in the book "A Quiet Violence: View from a Bangladesh Village," which told the stories of villagers and the violence that stems from hunger.

In 1985, Hartmann and Joyce moved to Amherst where Joyce began work as an economics professor at the University of Massachusetts.

Three years later, Hartmann joined the faculty of Hampshire College. Her nonfiction works include the 1995 "Reproductive Rights and Wrongs: The Global Politics of Population Control" and "Making Threats: Biofears and Environmental Anxieties, edited with Banu Subramaniam and Charles Zerner in 2005.

"Deadly Election" is Hartmann's second thriller. Her first, "The Truth about Fire," explores the fictional world of Neo-Nazis in American. She said she writes in the thriller genre because "It provides an opportunity to tell a parable and make deep observations about politics and people."

By combining her interest in politics with her longtime feminist activism, Hartmann created "Deadly Election" with three female heroines. Together they fight against an out-of-control executive branch bent on trampling civil liberties and the constitution in order to hold onto power.

"It's not a wild idea," Hartmann said.

"There is a real and present danger to the separation of powers. With the Patriot Act, we could move to a point where we start stripping people of their citizenship. I wanted it to be a warning sign for people to be more vigilant."

Amherst Books is located at 8 Main St. in Amherst. For more information about the author, visit her Web site at betsyhartmann.org.