THE BIG LIE
(SWYTECK NO. 16)
As the Electoral College battle for the White House lands in a Florida courtroom, Miami attorney Jack Swyteck has never felt farther from the truth, fighting for a “faithless elector,” caught between a corrupt president and his manipulative opponent—with each revelation more explosive than the next.
The country is reeling. For the sixth time in American history, the winner of the popular vote will not occupy the Oval Office. President Malcolm MacLeod, the Machiavellian incumbent, was spared from impeachment only because his political foes were certain they would oust him at the ballot box. Now, he appears to have secured a second term, thanks to a narrow victory in the Electoral College.
His opponent, Florida Senator Evan Stahl, saw his campaign rocked by allegations of an extramarital affair—with another man. Despite the salacious headline-making scandal and the surrounding media frenzy, most Americans chose Stahl to lead the politically polarized nation. But Stahl is refusing to concede. Backed by millions of supporters, he looks to individual members of the Electoral College to cross party lines.
Gun lobbyist Charlotte Holmes is one of Floridas twenty-nine electors who is bound by law and by oath to cast her vote for MacLeod, who won Florida by the thinnest of margins. When Charlotte announces that she intends to vote her conscience and throw the Electoral College to Stahl, the president and his Florida machine haul her into court on felony charges—which, for some, isn’t nearly punishment enough.
Miami attorney Jack Swyteck is going to use every legal maneuver he can to keep his new client free—and alive. MacLeod’s hand-picked prosecutor is determined to prove Charlotte is unfit to cast a vote. Dredging through her past, he’s looking for skeletons to humiliate and discredit her, while others with far deadlier intentions have begun acting on their threats.
As the pressure mounts, Charlotte and Jack must decide how far they’ll go to stand their ground in the stand-your-ground state.
“Perhaps a sign of Grippando’s brilliance is that a reader’s thoughts do not necessarily remain within the confines of the plot…a novel that makes your hair stand on end.”
— Washington Independent Review of Books
“Scintillating and seductive . . . one of those rare political thrillers destined to join the likes of Fletcher Knebel’s Seven Days in May and Allen Drury’s Consent in becoming a modern-day classic.”
— Huffington Post
“Expertly spun . . . the gorgeous Electoral College premise marks the beginning of a wild ride.”
— Kirkus Reviews
“An all-too-timely scenario drives bestseller Grippando’s solid 16th Jack Swyteck novel.”
— Publishers Weekly
“Parallels the current political climate …. A ruthless candidate might use this engrossing and scary book as a how-to manual.”
— Library Journal
“Scintillating and seductive . . . The Big Lie is one of those rare political thrillers destined to join the likes of Fletcher Kneble’s Seven Days in May and Allen Drury’s Advise and Consent in becoming a modern-day classic.”
— Providence Journal
Behind the book
“Florida, Florida, Florida”
- Tim Russert, NBC News Presidential Election Night Coverage, November 2000
“Oh, Florida. How do I love thee? Let me recount the ways.”
- Chuck Todd, NBC News Mid-Term Election Coverage, MTP Daily, November. 8, 2018
No state has rocked twenty-first century politics like Florida. Twice in sixteen years the winner of the nationwide popular vote has fallen short of the required 270 Electoral College votes. Twice, a narrow victory in Florida has propelled the “loser” into the White House.
Florida politics have always fascinated me. I worked on my first political campaign while in college, a state-level mudslinging fest in deeply conservative north Florida. As a young lawyer in Miami, I helped file a lawsuit challenging a U.S. Senate election, demanding a recount before “recount” became standard operating procedure in Florida. More recently, in the 2018 mid-term elections, I volunteered to oversee yet another recount in Broward County, Florida’s largest and “bluest” county.
Between the Republican-red north and Democratic-blue south lies a veritable sea of purple, Florida’s I-4 corridor—the nineteen-county, 132.3-mile swath from Gulf-side St. Petersburg to ocean-side Daytona, quite arguably the most valuable political cache of swing voters in America. Political consultants call it “America’s corridor of power,” paved with presidents made and contenders broken. It was the six-million registered voters in the middle-third of the peninsula that put Florida up for grabs in 2000, when Tim Russert famously predicted on his low-tech whiteboard that the election would come down to “Florida, Florida, Florida.” He proved prophetic. Florida’s twenty-nine Electoral College votes put Bush 43 in the White House, the outcome determined by a few hundred “hanging chads” and the votes of five Republican-appointed Supreme Court Justices in Gore v. Bush. Sixteen years later, it was the I-4 corridor that delivered Florida, and the presidency, to Donald Trump. It is this same purple swath that has all eyes, again, on “Florida, Florida, Florida” for the 2020 election.
Could it happen again?
The nation is politically polarized, and Florida is polarization on steroids. The squeaker of 2000 was only the first of three presidential elections this century in which the margin of victory in Florida was 1.2 percent or less. What if 2020 is the fourth time in twenty years where a candidate wins the nationwide popular vote decisively but loses all 29 of Florida’s Electoral College votes for failing—just barely—to carry a majority in Florida? Will the nation of over a hundred million voters accept that, under the current Electoral College System and our current socio-political makeup, the presidency is effectively decided by a few thousand swing votes in Central Florida?
Or will it be chaos?
The Big Lie is inspired by this premise—a fictional look into the near future that is informed by my life as writer, lawyer and political junky.
