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  • Published: 13 December 2018
  • ISBN: 9781529111576
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 352
  • RRP: $29.99

Night of Camp David




‘What would happen if the president of the U.S.A. went stark-raving mad?’ The 1965 bestselling political thriller, back by popular demand

Back by popular demand, the 1965 bestselling political thriller – ‘What would happen if the president of the U.S.A. went stark-raving mad?’

‘THRILLING’ Guardian
‘FIRST-RATE’ Daily Mail
‘COMPELLING’ Bob Woodward

‘A little too plausible for comfort’
New York Times, 1965
How can one man convince the highest powers in Washington that the President of the United States is dangerously unstable – before it's too late?
Senator Jim MacVeagh is proud to serve his country – and his president, Mark Hollenbach, who has a near-spotless reputation as the vibrant, charismatic leader of MacVeagh’s party and the nation. When Hollenbach begins taking MacVeagh into his confidence, the young senator knows that his star is on the rise.

But then Hollenbach starts summoning MacVeagh in the middle of the night to Camp David. There, the president sits in the dark and rants about his enemies, unfurling insane theories about all the people he says are conspiring against him. They would do anything, President Hollenbach tells the stunned senator, to stop him from setting in motion the grand, unprecedented plans he has to make America a great world power once again.

MacVeagh comes away from these meetings increasingly convinced that the man he once admired has lost his mind. But what can he do? Who can he tell?

  • Published: 13 December 2018
  • ISBN: 9781529111576
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 352
  • RRP: $29.99

About the author

Fletcher Knebel

Fletcher Knebel is the author of the number one bestseller Seven Days in May (with Charles W. Bailey II) and more than a dozen other works of fiction. From 1937 to 1964, he worked as a Washington correspondent for numerous American newspapers and magazines. He served as an air combat intelligence officer in the U.S. Navy during the Second World War, and later wrote a popular daily column, ‘Potomac Fever’, which satirised national politics and government.

In 1964, the year during which he wrote the New York Times bestselling thriller Night of Camp David, he was named president of the Gridiron Club, one of the oldest and most prestigious organisations for journalists in Washington. Born in Dayton, Ohio, in 1911, Knebel graduated from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, and died in 1993 at the age of eighty-one.

Praise for Night of Camp David

Compelling... It’s a testament to Knebel’s skill that Night of Camp David remains thrilling

Tom McCarthy, Guardian

This summer I reread Night of Camp David, the 1965 novel by Fletcher Knebel... The book ends with some compelling twists

Bob Woodward, author of Fear: Trump in the White House, New York Times

Eerily prescient

Laura Wilson, Guardian

When it first appeared, this first-rate thriller was termed "a little too plausible for comfort". It still is

Geoffrey Wansell, Daily Mail