The children of light

G. Sykes

In this novel it is the son and not the father who is the conservative. A full-blooded international career of oil wildcatting, marital freewheeling and ambassadorial roving has left 52-year-old John Peyton Trimble irrepressibly convinced that "experimentation" is the first rule of behavior, "essential to the courage to be oneself." His politically gifted son rigidly practices a contrary rule: "Never bet against the house, don't be a sucker, be the house." Novelist Sykes cleaves right to the secret core of his characters, he hacked a plot from political headlines, and so blunted his aptest insights. When Ambassador Trimble refuses to back his son's campaign for Congress, son Hank starts nasty rumors about the old man.