Interruption of the Cocktail Hour: A Washington Yarn of Art, Murder, and the Attempted Assassination of the President

Unexpected power yields some absurdly catastrophic results in Arthur Cotton Moore’s wildly entertaining new novel, Interruption of the Cocktail Hour.

Painting is the lifeblood of the aristocratic A. Pierpont Preston, despite the fact that recognition has eluded him. Ravaged by critics, without hope of sales, commissions, or a gallery show, Pete takes his new inheritance and his reluctant wife to Scapoosa County, Maryland, in search of artistic rejuvenation and a new beginning.

After meeting H2O, the Japanese-American inventor of the perfect untraceable killing machine, Pete steals it to use to his advantage. After a few unfortunate accidental deaths, he removes obstacles in his career, saves hundreds of innocent people, and silences evil on behalf of good. He becomes a hero in Pouletville by killing "The Abominable Chicken" which had been marauding the town and terrifying its citizens.

Pete pretends to be an architect during his affair with The White House Chief of Staff, which leads to his being hired to design a secret presidential hideaway--which then leads to his being offered millions to assassinate the president, just one more unexpected twist in his ridiculously bizarre life.

The outlandish comedy takes place throughout Washington, DC and Scapoosa County, via a large cast of memorable characters comprising art critics, White House and Secret Service staff, local construction workers, a police officer, a wealthy and vicious mother-in-law, a former wrestler, NRA supporters, a Pakistani bookmaker, a WASP family, illegal Chinese laborers, a billionaire and his fourth wife, and a New Jersey construction company.

Arthur Cotton Moore FAIA is a sixth-generation Washingtonian, a graduate of St. Albans School, Princeton University, and Princeton University School of Architecture.

ACM is a national award-winning, internationally recognized architect, preservationist, and planner. He is one of six hundred architects from around the world included since 1980 in the British compilation Contemporary Architects, which recognizes architects on an international level.

Since 1965, he has practiced in thirty-eight cities across the country, and received over seventy design awards, including two National Residential Design Awards from Architectural Record Magazine and three National AIA Honor Awards. He has served on design award juries throughout the country, including regional, state, and national AIA programs.

His projects have been published in over 2,700 articles in magazines and newspapers throughout the U.S., Europe, Scandinavia, and Japan, and included in many books. They also have been in group architectural exhibitions at the Cooper-Hewitt Museum, Columbia University's Center for the Study of American Architecture, and Columbia University's Avery Library Centennial Archive Exhibition.

ACM has traveled to 115 countries, has written on architecture, urban affairs, preservation, and art, and has lectured widely at universities and professional conferences.

Since 1990, he has had solo painting exhibitions in New York, Chicago, Washington, and Paris, and has participated in group shows in New York and Cologne. His 1995 travelling museum exhibition, Visions of the Future, was shown in the Czech Republic and Poland.

Architectural RecordMagazine awarded his furniture series, Industrial Baroque, its 1990 Award for Excellence in Design.

ACM’s first book was The Powers of Preservation; his next will be Washington Comiks, a series of irreverent paintings depicting the absurdities of our nation’s capital.

He lives in Washington, DC, with his wife, Patricia Moore.