Baker Mischief Book 4
Political Thriller
Date Published: 06-10-2025
What would happen if a man of integrity, calm judgment, and firm conservative principles were elected our President? Would he do better than what we have? Or might he discover that behind America’s expressed principles something still lingers from the Fall? That behind our longing for justice, for community, for fairness, for freedom, for beauty, proportion, for the things that nurture all that is good, Something is still out there?
Let’s see.
Excerpt
Ed Baker, professor of political science emeritus, watched a burst of snow obliterate the lights on the opposite shoreline. The world out the window got smaller. Since Melody had introduced him to her lake home in the northwestern part of the state, this had seemed a haven and a refuge. Now it began to feel like a premonition of four years for America. Dark, icy, and a threat to your life.
It was early yet today, not even breakfast time, and he’d finished email, lounging over his computer at the kitchen island. Melody was sleeping in a bit, dealing with some sort of cold for the last day or so. He was a little worried how fast this had come on and how weak she was. Another cup of coffee? I believe I will.
Looking back at him, faintly mirrored in the window, he saw a white-haired, white-bearded figure of middling height, dark wire-framed glasses, a little thicker around the middle than was probably healthy. Shadowy in a robe and slippers. That’s me, he thought. Pretty conventional. Beard and hair trimmed. Not ratty, not too well turned out. No lean Jordan Peterson, no pudgy, sloppy Jeff Bridges, no crisp Alec Guinness. No old surprises, and I feel like I’m fresh out of new ones. Just me.
When his journey into being a gadfly, a subtle saboteur, had begun four years ago, he had been widowed, a little thinner, clean-shaven, and dark-haired with some threads of white. Not any longer, he thought, and sighed happily.
He thought about that hyphenated estimate of the country’s emotional condition: “pre-suicidal.” He wouldn’t have expected the presidential election of 2024 to have turned out to be so emotionally devastating. When Former President Frederick Underwood Gray had “disappeared,” fleeing to Moscow in the face of possible impending arrest, and current President Gerard Freeman had decided to withdraw so both parties could start over, Baker had been cautiously optimistic. Both Democrats and Republicans had publicly talked about a “reset,” with reaffirmation of “first principles” about government. He hoped for new platforms.
It hadn’t happened.
About the Author
Dr. Richard Sherry is the author of the Baker Mischief series, including A Month of Sundays (2022) ; Mondays, Mondays (2023) ; and First Tuesday 2024. The political thriller series introduces retired political science professor Dr. Ed Baker, determined to open up American politics to daylight. He is almost always up against both the law and forces attempting to conceal their influence on American life. In A Month of Sundays, Baker uncovers who owns senators up for election in 2020 and releases their emails to the voters in their states. In Mondays, Mondays, he reveals a "voting bloc" in the Supreme Court and who is influencing them. In First Tuesday, Baker and his former students look at the influential forces behind the 2024 presidential election, with surprising results.
Richard released a memoir in 2020, The Long Run: Meditations on Marriage, Dementia, Caregiving, and Loss (2020), about his first wife's illness and death.
Richard is a retired college professor and administrator. He resides in Minnesota and winters in Arizona with his wife Marjorie Mathison Hance, author of the North lakes Murder Mystery Series.
Contact Links
Purchase Links
https://mybook.to/WednesdayAfter
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