The Chancellor Manuscript
by Robert Ludlum
In the prologue the protagonist meets an ambassador of the United States who on the subject of his thesis which is rejected. The ambassador convinces him to display his thesis in front of the public in the form of a novel. Chancellor complies, reluctantly, and soon becomes a famous novelist. The ambassador is revealed to be part of an organization known as Inver Brass. The organization is actually a group of intellectuals who intervene in political as well as economic matters when they think they are going off track. These intellectuals decide to assassinate J.Edgar Hoover, head of the Federal Bureau Of Investigation, on the grounds that they believe his private files contain damaging information on various political, military and other very important figures, and that Hoover uses this information to control them. When Hoover is assassinated by the work of the ingenious NSC official Stefan Varak, half of the files are not found. To get the remaining files Inver Brass recruit Peter Chancellor to get to the files, using him, by giving him a new subject for his novel, telling him that Hoover has been assassinated so that he will investigate further. From thereon Chancellor is trapped in a violent spiral, not knowing who his enemies are, desperately trying to finish his novel somehow.