December 2, 1954. The Senate votes to censure Joseph McCarthy, and Elias Vance feels nothing at all. The book then goes back four years to explain why.
The Reckoning follows Senator Vance from the snows of Korea and the Chosin Reservoir to the hearing rooms where McCarthy gains the power to subpoena anyone he chooses. It is a story about how decent people and ordinary bureaucracy can keep a destructive machine running without a single villain who believes he is doing harm.
The fight is on three fronts. Elias is in the public eye, with every vote and question recorded. Evelyn Cross is buried in the records of the atomic tests, looking for what the government will not admit about the men it exposed. Julian Hayes is invisible, working in the shadows for the Agency. Their paths converge only once.
Korea, the Rosenbergs, atomic testing in the desert, Iran and the Army-McCarthy hearings are all woven together in a political thriller about the weaponization of suspicion.
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