Shoot the Staff

Fred Hendricks, with a creaky back and chronic heartburn, is retiring from the United States Senate staff after forty years. But first, in a new assignment as the lead staffer for the defense appropriations subcommittee, he has to shepherd one last appropriations bill to enactment. His hopes for a smooth process are dashed when a whistleblower whispers about an NSA scheme to rig elections. Couple that with an upstart junior senator who challenges the bipartisan traditions of the Appropriations Committee, her short-tempered senior colleague with a strained party history, and an unchained president seeking to safeguard his reelection, and you get to Shoot the Staff. CJ Houy takes you inside the offices and hearing rooms of Congress in his third novel about politics, the Senate, and the characters who serve "e;the world's greatest deliberative body."e; Read it and learn how a bill really becomes a law.