About This Book
The Candidacy is a story about unintended consequences. It introduces the reader to Katherine O’Connor, a charismatic United States Senator and the first woman to win a major party’s nomination for the presidency. She is in a tight three-way race for the White House with only a one percent gap between herself and her Democratic opponent. Her campaign gets more complicated when she receives a blackmail threat from her college roommate, Lisa Smith, who threatens to go public with a lesbian relationship they had several years ago. Given her campaign’s small margin for error, she decides to pay for Ms. Smith’s silence and asks her campaign’s largest fundraiser, Alex Mesina, to make the deal. What she does not know is that Mr. Mesina uses his political connections to further his drug trafficking. Rather than risk that money might not keep her quiet, he orders his chief henchman, Kevin Shansey, to kill both Ms. Smith and Francine Nelson, an intern who overheard Senator O’Connor discussing the threat. The attempt on Ms. Smith is successful but Ms. Nelson escapes. When a second letter arrives, supposedly from Ms. Smith but postmarked three days after her death, Mr. Mesina takes it as proof of Ms. Nelson’s involvement. He orders his henchmen to intensify their efforts to eliminate her. Ms. Nelson has no connection to the extortion threats. She endeavors to evade the attempts on her life and learn who is behind them.
