For Ambrose Merrion, life is first and foremost a matter of people taking care of one another, with society picking up the slack when family and friends aren't enough. For Danny Hilliard, who agrees, politics is a matter of gaining and using the power to make sure that society does just that. Merrion, installed as clerk of the court in Canterbury, Massachusetts, shrewdly manages his friend's campaigns; Hilliard rises swiftly to chairman of the Ways and Means in the Massachusetts House of Representatives. They make an excellent team, able on a grand scale to revitalize the economy of Hilliard's western Massachusetts district-and on a personal level to protect the unfortunate snared in the criminal justice system. Quite unexpectedly, Merrion inherits ill-gotten gains from a corrupt predecessor he'd befriended, enabling him to indulge with Hilliard in the finer things: luxury cars, travel, and membership in the country club at Grey Hills-a Roaring Twenties millionaire's Pioneer Valley estate that offers a championship golf course and the quiet elegance that only money can buy.

But then something goes wrong. Hilliard, to Merrion's dismay, begins to play away games at bedtime in Boston during legislative sessions; his lovely wife becomes angry and kicks him out for adultery. Newspapers run revealing photos of him with much younger "girlfriends." A federal prosecutor, mistaking righteous vengeance for doing justice, believes he has found an exquisitely ingenious way to put Hilliard in jail by forcing Merrion to incriminate him. Someone has changed the rules while Ambrose and Danny weren't looking: the law of political gravity has changed, and what was good clean wickedness in 1960 has become a felony in 1996.