The background is political, with nothing less than the Presidency itself at stake. A new candidate enters the lists, radiating charisma - a natural choice, it would seem, for his party's nomination. But you can't be too careful, and his advisers decide to check out everything about him, including an Irish grandfather about whom almost nothing is known. A genealogist is put on the trail, so discreetly that when the man who hired him is killed in a car crash the other advisers don't know how to contact him. But what they do know is that he has begun to unearth a series of ever-deepening scandals.
Both the genealogist's hunt for the truth and the politicians' hunt for the genealogist yield some exciting twists, in a plot that zigzags halfway round the world. Toward the end of the story, though, there is a certain running out of steam, as the chief villain turns out to be a bit too melodramatic even by the prevailing standards.'