I have an appalling confession to make. I didn’t touch either of the books on my summer reading list on Lib Dem Voice last month. In fact, I didn’t even take one of them with me. I don’t even possess them!

Should I do some sort of penance? You know the sort of thing. Should I compile an encyclopaedia of Bob Shaw’s blog titles? Or act as Lembit’s celebrity appearance booker for a month?

In place of the two books I listed, I read instead Running Mate by Joe Klein, which I recommend. It was loaned to me by an upstanding member of the Liberator editorial collective.

Mr Klein wrote, under the name ‘Anonymous’, Primary Colors. That was the entertaining political novel based on loosely on the rise of Bill Clinton, which was turned into a film starring John Travolta and Emma Thompson (with a charming cameo appearance by Larry Hagman, I would like to add).

On the face of it, Running Mate, his sequel to that novel, does not inspire. Are there many people who would pick up a book which isn’t about a President or (for most of it) a Presidential candidate? It’s about a boring old senator. In fact one of the highlights of the book is the tussle over the approval by the Senate Armed Services committee of the President’s candidate for Secretary of Defense. Not a prepossessing plot line. Imagine someone trying to sell that as a movie proposition to Hollywood … Only marginally more interesting than a novel about the mid-order agenda items of a Newbury Town Council Cemeteries Working party meeeting.

But, in fact, the book is so well-written, with excellent and nuanced observation of expression and fascinating little episodes, that it is gripping. It actually persuades me again, if I needed persuading (which I don’t), that the ridiculously elongated debate over the future of the UK’s second chamber could have been solved decades ago simply by adopting the model of the US Senate, which must be one of the most respected democratic institutions in the world (though fraught with issues such as the amount of money you need to be part of it).

Running Mate can be bought here on Amazon, and if you click on the link here and buy it, you will unleash a shower of money going to the party equivalent to cancelling out the national debt of Luxembourg.

PS. The fiscally astute may have realised that Luxembourg doesn’t have any national debt.

* Paul Walter blogs at Liberal Burblings.