With oil prices spiking, the war in Iraq dragging on without pause and the economy in decline, it's no wonder that everyone has a theory as to why these events are taking place. The most popular craze arising from the ashes of our collective despair is that of the world wide conspiracy. Granted this renewed buzzword often precludes amateurish results. The collecting of disparate but incorrect facts together in a nonsensical jumble is fun but ultimately fruitless. On the other hand, the useful theory is one that comes so close to the truth that it is very difficult to disprove. Let's take the new novel Purple State for example. Author Alex Hutchinson, a political activist himself, has researched a collection of accurate facts and connected them together in a fictional outline that is rather challenging to separate from reality.

The story is based in Florida and begins immediately after the 2000 Presidential recount. A young but crafty political operative named Chad Clanton is asked by the State Democratic Party to follow up on accusations of voter intimidation and electoral manipulation. Chad's findings are accumulated over the course of five months and stored as thirty nine boxes of evidence. Before they can be shipped to Washington D.C. for a Grand Jury hearing, Chad is murdered.

Chad's old college roommate Ed Morrissey, now a private detective, is called in to investigate the murder. Up to this point the plot is a standard affair but after Ed lands in Orlando the story changes from one of intrigue to one of involvement. Ed knows very little about politics but the men who hired him insist that he must learn as much as possible in order to fathom the motivations of the people who murdered his friend. Ed's resistance to their partisan lectures is almost comical. He's an independent thinker. He doesn't belong to a political party and he's not interested in their issues or policies. He only wants to find the killer and bring him to justice.

Over the course of the story Ed is provided with a first class education in American politics. Each character tries to teach him something new about the current state of Florida's affairs and they can hardly help it. This was a time when Floridians were being ridiculed about the Presidential Recount. Following 9/11 the state dived into an economic slump and then the various counties were pressured into spend millions of dollars to purchase computer voting machines. After passing this prerequisite the reader ends up feasting on the much deeper concerns of Ed's employers who turn out to be a highly entrenched group of activists with agendas of their own. Even the villain tries to win over Ed with his own style of charismatic persuasion.

By the time the reader meets with an episode of suspense they might have to put aside their Safire dictionary and remind themselves that this is indeed a work of fiction. The action is rare but hardly necessary. Alex is a master of assembling real life characters like Florida Governor Charlie Crist, Former Senator Bob Graham and current Senator Bill Nelson, and then placing them in scenarios so plausible that they might have actually happened. He also uses pieces of real life history to connect events in timelines that substantiate his arguments. With all of that in mind, Purple State is two thirds of the way towards being a non-fiction novel. What makes it fiction is that many of the relationships and conversations cannot be proven true or false without a massive and arduous effort. Since it is not standard practice to study such works with an acute eye, we will have to assume that the author has been honest in his genre selection.

What is not in doubt is that Purple State represents a brilliantly contrived conspiracy that connects the Florida elections with the war in Iraq. It depicts a standoff between OPEC and East Texas Oil Companies while adding a couple unique twists suggesting why 9/11 might have happened. For these theories to prove true, Alex hardly needed to stretch. He could have merely quoted any college economics textbook to express what many know but seldom say. War is always about money and power. All other declarations are mere window dressing to sooth the fears of those whose conscience is mightier than their wallets. If conspiracies are a way to unburden our fears during insecure times then perhaps Purple State is a blessing in disguise.