Code Z

Code Z: an unpublicized federal statute empowering the President to step aside during national crisses in favor of a specially trained "crisis manager." Taking this statute as a starting point, Washington journalist Joel Swerdlow has fashioned a provocative - and disturbing - contemporary novel about power and paranoia: three critical hours in Washington, D.C., when the President relinquishes his power to a brilliant, highlytrained agent of the CIA.