The Witch of Watergate (Fiona Fitzgerald Novel) - Hardcover

Adler, Warren

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1556112963 ISBN 13: 9781556112966

Publisher: Donald I Fine, 1992

Synopsis

Senator's daughter and Washington, D.C., homicide detective Fiona FitzGerald tackles her fifth case when an infamous gossip columnist is found twisting in the wind from a balcony of the Watergate Complex.

About this title

About the Author

Warren Adler is best known for The War of the Roses, his masterpiece fictionalization of a macabre divorce turned into the Golden Globe and BAFTA nominated dark comedy hit starring Michael Douglas, Kathleen Turner and Danny DeVito. In addition to the success of the stage adaptation of his iconic novel on the perils of divorce, Adler has optioned and sold film rights to more than a dozen of his novels and short stories to Hollywood and major television networks. Random Hearts (starring Harrison Ford and Kristen Scott Thomas), The Sunset Gang (starring Jerry Stiller, Uta Hagen, Harold Gould and Doris Roberts), Private Lies, Funny Boys, Madeline's Miracles, Trans-Siberian Express and his Fiona Fitzgerald mystery series are only a few titles that have forever left Adler's mark on contemporary American authorship from page to stage to screen. Learn more about Warren Adler at www.warrenadler.com.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

THE PUNGENT AROMA of the awakening spring earth and the manure of the hundred-odd horse entries of the Middleburg Hunt Races wafted over the soft greening field. Spaces allocated to patrons of the races were filled with elaborately decorated tables, some with candelabra, crystal and silver tureens, colorful flower arrangements, linen tablecloths and exotic food concoctions.

Some were tented and served by waiters in black tie and the air was often punctuated by the sounds of champagne bottles popping. Others were merely sumptuous tailgate parties complete with full bar and more rustic food placed elegantly on checkered tablecloths.

As always, Fiona FitzGerald noted, there was less interest in the races and more in the imbibing and socializing. Chappy Chapin’s bash was a case in point. There he was, ex-Ambassador to Switzerland, now a bachelor man-about-town, holding forth alongside his yellow and black antique Rolls complete with a horn that trilled “Pop Goes the Weasel” on command. As a long-standing patron of the races he had a choice up-front location.

Chappy, although he did not ride, looked the part of the gentleman horseman. His tall frame was ramrod straight and his clipped moustache on a pink complexion gave him an outdoorsy look that belied his sedentary life. His relaxed hosting of this little group of ten bespoke a practiced social elegance. He wore a plaid deerstalker cap and matching cape, which, on him, looked perfectly normal.

Chappy always had a good group to the hunt races, and he was usually a patron of most of them in the Washington area. His menu was invariable, made with his own hands in his lovely house in Georgetown: spicy fried chicken, delicious syrupy baked beans and bacon, his own secret formula, and lush chocolate brownies. And, of course, pitchers of Bloody Marys, champagne and whatever else alcoholic his guests might desire.

“What race is this?” Harvey Halloran asked, turning casually toward the field, where a number of horses were steeplechasing around the track. Few of Chappy’s guests paid any attention to the races, except to place an occassional bet with the various gentlemen bookies that collected slips near the official tent. Halloran was a lobbyist for the oil and gas industry. The other guests included a Congressman and his wife, a State Department Assistant Secretary and his girlfriend, the Peruvian Ambassador and his wife and a stockbroker and his male live-in lover. To Fiona, they were familiar Washington types, par for the course.

An invitation to one of Chappy’s tailgating racing parties was a hot ticket and Fiona was often invited as Chappy’s date when he didn’t have a steady on his arm and she wasn’t toiling in the Eggplant’s homicide vineyard.

Today she was here out of her own sheer therapeutic necessity. Things downtown were depressing. Drug gang wars and the accelerating introduction of automatic weapons had considerably raised the homicide body count, putting unbearable pressure on the entire department. A hurricane of death was sweeping through Washington and homicide was in its vortex.

About this edition

• Publisher: Donald I Fine
• Publication date: 1992
• ISBN 10: 1556112963
• ISBN 13: 9781556112966
• Binding: Hardcover