David Baldacci

And my law office was near the White House back then.

And I would see the president sometimes and the motorcade and all that stuff.

And

I was a history buff, and I'd read about Kennedy and all the Tristan affairs he had.

And I thought, what if I had a president who had an affair and something really bad happened, and they had to kill the woman, and there had to be a cover-up?

I thought that could be an interesting story, and that turned out to be absolute power.

So in Nashville, Walter Nash is a businessman.

I mean, he's different from anybody I've written about before.

He's, you know, never fired a gun in anger, never lifted a weight, never been in law enforcement, never been with any federal agency.

But he's done really well.

He's achieved the American dream, you know.

He's done everything they were supposed to do.

He went to a good school.

He worked hard.

He made money.

He and his wife and daughter have a nice life.

The only smudge in his relationship, in his life, is with his father, who he was estranged from.

His father was a Vietnam veteran.

They had a falling out.

The beginning of Nash Falls, the first book, he's going to his father's funeral and he goes to the funeral with his wife and daughter and his father's best friend from Vietnam gets up, gives a eulogy and trashes Walter Nash in front of everyone, which is just a horrific sort of event for him.