Prescient then, dismayingly relevant now…and hopeful

This week marks the ten-year anniversary of the publication of Faithless Elector, a thriller about stealing the presidency by manipulating the Electoral College. It kick-started the (fictional) career of Imogen Trager, a Justice Department agent in the FBI’s Voting Integrity.

The novel debuted in March of 2016, and its plot presaged many of the alarming things we contend with today—a shadowy, mendacious elite interested only in naked power, compromised officials, questions about voting integrity and much more.

This reminder cropped up this morning.

In Faithless Elector, an idealistic, young graduate student working on his dissertation stumbles across a deeply suspicious number of deaths among Electors that no one else seems to have noticed.

He needs to get the information to someone who will believe him (he’s had conspiracy theories before), and who can do something to stop the plot before it’s too late. Which is where my recurring heroine and alter ego, Imogen Trager, a Justice Department agent in the FBI’s Voter Integrity makes her entrance.

The action covers just six weeks—a lifetime in politics…or the end of one—beginning in November, on the night of the 2016 general election and culminating on the day of the real presidential election, December 16, when Electors meet in their respective state capitols to cast their votes for president and vice-president.

As Imogen digs deeper into the case, she begins to suspect that some of her own colleagues might be working against her.

The novel sold well, and though I’ve since published three more (with another on the way!), it remains my best seller. The book was many years in the making, and as a result, it’s not about the current administration (Trump was not even the GOP’s candidate for president when the book came out) but about well-heeled forces undermining democracy, so intent on control that they’re willing to “shoot the hostage.”

What surprised many readers was that the conspiracy wasn’t tied to either of the main political parties, though it was parasitic on one of them. The most personally disturbing part of the book’s journey has been the continued sclerotic polarization of politics.

Imogen was (and is!) a heroine for our times not because she had an axe to grind but because she believed in justice, fairness and the sanctity of the vote. At the time, her stance was the least controversial or partisan part of the story.

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James McCrone’s stories pose questions about the nature of power, the choices we make and the lessons we don’t learn.

He’s the author of the Imogen Trager political suspense-thrillers Faithless Elector, Dark Network and Emergency Powers–noir tales about a stolen presidency, a conspiracy, and a nation on edge. Bastard Verdict, his fourth novel, is about a conspiracy surrounding a second Scottish Independence referendum. His current novel, Witness Tree, is out on submission.

All books are available on BookShop.org, IndyBound.org, Barnes & Noble, your local bookshop, and Amazon.

eBooks are available in multiple formats including Apple, Kobo, Nook and Kindle.

James is a member of Mystery Writers of America, Int’l Assoc. of Crime Writers, and he’s the current president of the Delaware Valley chapter of Sisters in Crime. He has an MFA from the University of Washington in Seattle, and he now lives and writes in Philadelphia, PA.

For a full list of appearances and readings, make sure to check out his Events/About page. And you can also follow me on Substack!

Some of his short stories are available FREE online. Links are HERE toward the bottom of the page.