"You've never met a politician like Roscoe Conway (or have you?): a suave Falstaffian in a double-breasted white Palm Beach suit, unscrupulous, brilliant, exploding with courtly romance. It's V-J Day, the war's over, and Roscoe, after twenty-six years as chief brain truster of Albany's notorious political machine, decides to quit politics forever. But there's no exit, only new political wars and scandalous threats to his beloved and her family.".

"Roscoe, the chivalrous warrior, finds fraudulence an extremely effective combat weapon for coping with the erupting disasters. "Righteousness doesn't stand a chance against the imagination," he concludes.

Every step forward leads Roscoe back to the past - to the early loss of his true love, his own peculiar heroics in the First World War, the takeover of city hall, the machine's fight with FDR and Al Smith to elect a governor, and the methodical assassination of gangster Jack "Legs" Diamond."--BOOK JACKET.