Crown Oklahoma - Hardcover

When Jim Lehrer turned his hand to writing fiction, the results were praised by reviewers from coast to coast. Now available in paperback, this series has "the most endearing cast of characters since the days of Damon Runyon" (The Denver Post). The hero is "One-Eyed Mack, " the lieutenant governor of Oklahoma, a likeable and surprisingly insightful politico. Lehrer deftly mixes fact and fiction to create stories so bizarre, readers swear it must be fact.

TV anchorman Lehrer of The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour takes a dyspeptic view of the mass media in this slim picaresque fable. Its hero is One-Eyed Mack, swashbuckling if harried lieutenant-governor of Oklahoma who starred in Lehrer's last novel, Kick the Can. He learns from a CBS broadcast that the Okies, a highly secret organized-crime group based in his very own state, is making inroads on the Mafia and terrorizing the Southwest. But this news item turns out to be a hoax concocted by disaffected CBS reporter Archibald Tyler. As FBI agents, newsmen and real Mafiosi swarm all over the state, Mack's goal is to out-fake this faker--to fool Tyler into supposing that his tall tale has more than a grain of truth. Aiding him in this scheme is Brother Walt, oddball preacher of the Hoy Road church, and "Cool" Harry Hayes, Oklahoma's law enforcement chief, who drives a black Lincoln Continental with a submachine gun strapped to the front seat. This wacky saga is more entertaining for its funky local color and grassroots humor than as a satire on the media's tendency toward sensation-mongering. Paperback rights to Ballantine.
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