Running for the House

by Howard Kleinhendler

Overview

Political intrigue and unchecked ambition combine in Howard Kleinhendler's tense debut thriller, Running for the House.

Operating under the utmost secrecy, a shadowy organization comprised of former spies and special forces agents, known only as "the Committee," prepares its most daring plot yet.

Able to avoid congressional guidelines, yet privy to all of the National Security Agency's resources and databases, the Committee has set its sights upon Russia's increasingly bold involvement in the South American drug trade.

Determined to stop it at any cost, the Committee aims to develop a top secret biological weapon-one that sends its victims into organ failure by scrambling their unique biological electromagnetic field...thus leaving no evidence behind.

In order to accomplish this, however, they must have a man on the inside. That man is Michael Gordon, an ambitious New Jersey lawyer who has no idea the manipulation and string-pulling the Committee has going on behind the scenes of his congressional race.

As Gordon delves deeper into the ruthless world of politics, his personal life begins to fall apart even as his professional life climbs to greater heights. Will Gordon discover the truth behind his political run? Or will he be content playing the puppet forever?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781500282585
Publisher:	CreateSpace Publishing
Publication date:	09/09/2014
Pages:	318
Product dimensions:	5.24(w) x 7.99(h) x 0.66(d)

About the Author

Howard Kleinhendler is a lawyer whose esteemed twenty-year career at his New York practice has spanned cases from civil disputes to securities fraud to white collar crime.

Having made numerous appearances over the years on CBS News, Fox Business News, and Bloomberg Television regarding his legal expertise, Kleinhendler also served as the 2010 Democratic Nominee for Congress in New Jersey's fourth congressional district.

Kleinhendler currently lives with his wife in New Jersey. They have five children.

Editorial Reviews

10/20/2014
Even a seasoned genre writer would have a tough time pulling off the far-out premise of Kleinhendler’s tedious thriller: a covert cabal handpicks a nobody to be elected to Congress so he can gain its members’ access to a biological super weapon. The conspirators, known as the Committee, have learned of a technology that can identify every person’s unique “electrobiological signature.” With “targeted bursts of energy waves emitted from satellites or drones,” one can kill a man and make it look like a natural death. The Committee selects New York City trial lawyer Michael Gordon as their stealth pawn and sets out to manipulate him into office. At one point, the number of Gordon’s Facebook friends increases overnight from 32 to a still modest 200, though his new ones include “Rahm Emanuel, John Corzine, and Bill Gates.” Such errors as referring to caffeine as a “strong sedative” don’t help the over-the-top story line. (BookLife)

Publishers Weekly

2014-11-20
An aspiring congressman is unwittingly a pawn in a complicated game of political espionage. Kleinhendler's debut thriller is the story of Michael Gordon, a businessman who decides to enter politics in midlife and run for Congress. Unbeknownst to Gordon, however, the people encouraging him to run and managing his campaign are members of a secret cabal known only as "the committee." A sort of black-ops unit loosely connected with the Drug Enforcement Administration, the committee contains some of the world's top spies. Their goal is to create a deadly biological weapon to combat the Russian control of South American drug markets, and their hope is to install Gordon as a puppet in Congress to help further their agenda. Gordon goes blithely along with the plan, never really suspecting just how much he is being manipulated and what he has really gotten himself into. The seemingly unerring committee rarely stumbles. They are able to pull the strings of virtually every other character in the book, even infecting one person with cancer. Kleinhendler certainly skimps on the character development in favor of thrills and complicated schemes. This is especially true when it comes to his female characters—nearly all are impossibly beautiful, sexy, smart and good with a gun. The convoluted plot—full of spies and femmes fatales—gets ever knottier as it nears its climax, and it's hard to remember who is out to kill whom. Yet, this novel seems to bask in all of its thrills, sex and violence, and it's appealing for not pretending to be anything other than what it is. It could be tailor-made for a Hollywood summer blockbuster, one where the guns rule the action while the stars coolly say lines like, "That was quite a mess in Rio." In a time when the scope of the National Security Agency remains a hot-button issue, and drug cartels continue to wreak havoc around the world, this novel taps into a kind of escapist cultural zeitgeist. An entertaining, if shallow, thriller.

Kirkus Reviews