Inside Politics

When we last met Samantha Joyce, the heroine of Kristin Gore’s 2005 best-selling Sammy’s Hill, she was recovering from a terrible breakup and coming to the end of a presidential campaign fraught with disasters. In the follow-up, Sammy’s House (Hyperion, 400 pp., $24.95), her boss, Robert Gary, is two years into his term as vice president in the Wye administration. Sammy remains health care advisor to RG, so a large part of Sammy’s House deals with the issue of affordable prescription drugs, Canadian imports and the influence of large pharmaceutical companies. This novel isn’t as humorous as the first, but there’s plenty of political intrigue, a nemesis (possibly two) for Sammy and something not quite right in the White House—all of which pulls the plot along at a fair clip.

Sammy’s young and still aiming for life outside the office, which means trying not to kill her latest Japanese fighting fish and managing to have a somewhat normal relationship. Boyfriend Charlie is a Washington Post reporter whose ace skills are moving him up the editorial ladder and into the notice of Sammy’s colleagues, who wonder whether she might be the source behind his White House scoops. Meanwhile, the true secret source plaguing the administration is providing gossip and—even more distressing—leaking unflattering truths to a malicious anonymous blog.

Just as she incorporated lots of pop cultural references in her first novel, Gore has infused this one with the latest media developments. Sammy still wields her BlackBerry with typical D.C. prowess, but even she finds blogs a bit much: “It was disconcerting to get hard news about where I worked from an anonymous blog.” Gore also incorporates a reality TV show that cleverly allows for cameo appearances by former President Pile, now star of Piling On, a program chronicling his reentry into regular life.

It’s easy to read innuendoes about one recent administration or another into Gore’s narrative, whether in the comic relief provided by Pile or the threat of scandal looming over President Wye. Gore handles these sections well, which suggests that though she is a veteran comedy writer—an alum of both Futurama and Saturday Night Live—she may also have a future in more serious, politically tinged novels that draw on her knowledge of life inside the Beltway.

Kristin Gore reads at Davis-Kidd Booksellers at 6 p.m. July 16.