Christopher Buckley: They Eat Puppies, Don't They? (Corsair, £11.99)

Saturday 21 July 2012

Like his biggest hit, Thank You For Smoking, Christopher Buckley's latest satirical farce descends into the morally murky world of the lobbyist.

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alastair mabbott

However, this time he's not poking fun at the ethics of the tobacco industry but at America's humiliating dependence on China.

A Senate committee's refusal to approve a new generation of drone planes spurs "Bird" McIntyre, lobbyist for an aerospace manufacturer, to plant a fake news story to ratchet up tensions with China in the hope that a more militaristic climate will improve business for his client. He joins forces with formidable arch-neocon Angel Templeton from hawkish think tank, the Institute For Continuing Conflict, and starts a rumour that China plans to assassinate the Dalai Lama. To lend credence to his story, the Dalai Lama is, actually, terminally ill. But was he poisoned?

Bird's mischief, as intended, has global repercussions. The chain-smoking, insomniac Chinese leader, Fa Mengyao, finds himself at odds with his fellow Committee members, who frantically quote the wisdom of Sun Tzu at each other in their attempts to find a way out of the crisis. At home (surrounded, incidentally, by Civil War re-enactors), Bird's wife Myndi, whose equestrian ambitions are draining his bank account, has her heart set on competing at an event in Beijing, but no idea that her husband's clandestine plot is behind the international controversy that may prevent her attending.It's interesting that the author is the son of conservative icon William F Buckley, who aspired to write thrillers with protagonists who were unencumbered by the moral ambiguity of authors such as Le Carre and Greene. Bird himself writes dreadful, unpublishable thrillers, whose heroes are archetypally square-jawed, gung-ho patriots – although whether this is a dig or a tribute isn't, on the available evidence, easy to discern. Suffice to say, the professionals who have to smooth over Bird's mess are not at all like the trigger-happy heroes of his imagination.There are few real belly-laughs here, but Buckley is consistently amusing, and knows the inner workings of Washington well enough to allow his yarn to become ever more complex and ridiculous while still remaining rooted in the real world. A fun read, if not his best.THEY EAT PUPPIES, DON'T THEY?Christopher Buckley, Corsair, £11.99

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Christopher Buckley: They Eat Puppies, Don't They? (Corsair, £11.99)

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