Smeared — Mark Rogers

In Washington D.C. where actual policy change is a fool's game while voter manipulation an every day occurrence, Hartford Keepe is everybody's go-to guy. Chief of Staff to six term, senator, Harold P. Feldstone, chairman of the almighty Senate Appropriations Committee, Hartford wields his influence like a skilled marksman with uncanny aim. His job, his lot in life, his sole reason for being, is to keep the senator in power. Annie Green, Hart's live-in girlfriend, doesn't buy the image he pedals. She believes government's claim of attracting the best and the brightest is pure fraud and sees her boyfriend as one of those geniuses helping to shove her country over a cliff. She wastes entirely too much of her time trying to uncover his conscience, temper his actions and salvage their relationship. When a formal little man named Thomas, decked out in eighteenth century colonial garb, with no last name and no recent memory, pokes his head into the crosshairs, Hart can hardly believe his luck. He figures the gods aren't just smiling on him, they're throwing him a party. Then somewhere between the "no return point" and "what the hell have I done," Hart realizes he's unleashed a smear campaign on this unsuspecting little dupe, of gargantuan proportions. Not only is the man's survival in jeopardy, so is the fate of a nation. Hartford's singular voice propels this insightful work by debut novelist Mark Rogers into a spot-on luminary of todays political scene. Written in a unique, plain spoken, voice, the author skimps on neither storyline nor politics to keep the pages turning. Smeared is written for those who wish restoration, not transformation, of the country they love.