The Dick Cheney Code: A Parody

by Henry N. Beard

Book Overview

A bestselling, Harvard-bred humorist plans to knock out a slapdash, quick-buck parody of a wildly successful, head-spinning, clue-laden thriller in a flagrant attempt to cash in on the publishing sensation of the decade, but the tousle-haired satirist's sleazy scheme goes awry when his two heroes -- beautiful, brilliant Sandra Damsel and brawny, brainy Professor William Franklin -- stumble on an explosive and frankly preposterous centuries-old...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0743270029
• ISBN13: 9780743270021
• Release Date: September 2004
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Length: 193 Pages
• Weight: 0.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.6" x 8.6"

Customer Reviews

An excellent combination of satire and spoof

This book is a combination spoof and satire. The spoof aspect is in play because it follows a plot line similar to "The Da Vinci Code" by Dan Brown. It is satirical in the sense that it lampoons the Bush administration and how it has conducted itself. In the most significant cases, the actual names of the perps are used. Dick Cheney, George W. Bush, Karl Rove, John Ashcroft and Antonin Scalia all appear in the book. Then there are many made up and hysterical names such as special agents Fine and Dandy, the two great preachers Jordy Weevil and Pug Buggerson, agent Sandra Damsel, Virginia Senator Richard Kydd, Native American Quick Brown Fox and lobbyist Hale Hardy. As is the case in "The Da Vinci Code" there are two main characters who are engaged in tracking down a murder case. The codes in this case are trivial, what makes them funny is that the characters take them so seriously. My favorite scene is when Dick Cheney is trying to enter a secret chamber where he is joining the remainder of the cabal controlling the world. Queen Elizabeth, Henry Kissinger, Alan Greenspan, David Rockefeller and Rupert Murdoch are already present. The secret knock is of course, "Shave-and-a-haircut, two bits." There is an enormous amount of very funny satire in this book. However, like the best of the genre, it is necessary to have a great deal of knowledge about recent affairs in order to understand all of it. For example, there are references to the "Skull and Bones" secret society at Yale. The relationship between Thomas Jefferson and his slave girl Sally Hemmings is a significant part of the plot, if you know nothing about that relationship, then it will be difficult to untangle the plot. Nevertheless, if you understand the references, this book is hysterical.

For Cheney's Boys...

They being the five young Americans who went to Vietnam in place of Dick (5 deferments) Cheney. There's absolutely nothing wrong with getting five deferments, unless you subsequently become a politician and send other people's sons and daughters off to war. A book that mocks the overblown and utterly derivative The Da Vinci Code and Dick Cheney at the same time simply has to be worth a read. I managed to force myself through the mind-numbingly predictable TdVC only to discover that it had taken literally all of its ideas from countless books that had been spouting the same 'revelations' for at least two decades. While it is definitely an advantage to have read The Da Vinci Code, I'm sure this book would be highly entertaining even as is. Seriously funny... which is probably an oxymoron. But then, let's leave Rumsfeld out of this. By the way, Mona Lisa means Ra Isis.

Magnificently humorous!!

This is a book that one can truly laugh outloud while reading, only if they've met the following two criteria: 1.) they've read the DaVinci Code and 2.) they are up to speed on all the happenings in Washington, DC and the political arena. If you have not met these two criteria, then the book will not seem as enjoyable or as funny. The author has brilliantly masterminded a way to incorporate the similar twists from the DaVinci Code into a political thriller/parody. This is an easy reading, which can be read in one sitting (well, depending on how many times you have to stop reading because you're laughing so hard...) and is well worth the time!

A delicious parody

From page one, "The Dick Cheney Code" surpasses "The Da Vinci Code" whose peculiarities it caricatures. It's not only civilized, clever, and well written, but also -- and this is crucially important, because these days it would be easy, with what's going on inside the Beltline, to succumb to despair -- it's delightfully funny! A good laugh is hard to find. As Norman Couisins would attest, Henry Beard has contributed to the health of the nation by offering this delicious parody just when we need it.

The Dismissive Mode; or, Beard Beards Cheney and Brown

Although one prerequisite for reviewing a parody might be actually to have read the work parodied, Henry Beard's "The Dick Cheney Code" ("TDickCC") mercifully gives some respite from the dirty work of having to read "The Da Vinci Code" ("TDaVC"), work that this reviewer wouldn't wish on any worst enemy he hypothetically happened to have. --Not that anyone on our terrestrial surface, barring a few deaf-and-blind sorts, can presently be ignorant of the basic skullduggery-plus-cryptic-investigations-shows-us-that-Jesus-gets-it-on-with-Mary-Magdalene-thank-you-Lenny-Da-Vinci- & -"Mona-Lisa" plot of TDaVC. The respite comes because of two main points. First, Beard, by his scathing and frequent asides about how ludicrous the plot twists in a conventional thriller like TDaVC are, reveals to us what a waste of time and money it might be to become yet another sucker coming to see Dan Brown's circus in TDaVC. Second, the relevance factor which TDickCC has, about the turpitude and sinister machinations of the Cheney/Bush administration and also about the upcoming election. (As for TDaVC, Jesus "schtupping" Mary Magdalene is hardly irrelevant, either, but the malevolence of the present American government is probably far more likely and provable than any alleged dalliance between a messiah and a possible whore.) Henry Beard, by the way, is no stranger to bearding the Bush administration, cf. his (co-)authoring of the 2003 comedic illustrated book "Where's Saddam?" He puts this experience to superb use in skewering Cheney and his cohorts royally, including a take on Rumsfeld's mock-Hamlet "pose a question and answer it myself" speech pattern. Beard also uses his Latin expertise (he has written several books on that hardly-dead language), and also pig-Latin expertise, in creating codes for his characters to use. Finally, he draws on the example of his most famous work, the 1969 "Lord of the Rings" parody "Bored of the Rings" (co-authored with Douglas C. Kenney), for the general boffo style of ruthless and silly funmaking he uses in order to mock and awe in grand style. Speaking of borrowing from earlier works: Beard apparently lifts from materials as varied as "A Matter of Honor" (by Britain's now-disgraced "Lord" Jeffrey Archer), a 1986 thriller about how a newly-discovered secret treaty deeds Alaska to Russia--not a prospect that Cold War-era America would relish--; and a novel whose name I can't remember, of about 25 years ago, in which an unearthed tank in Normandy reveals evidence that Eisenhower et al. made a literal deal with the Devil in order to beat the Nazis. More details might reveal too many TDickCC plot twists, but this present author may at least note that Beard does clever things with the materials noted above, and Beard adds hilarious twists to them _re_ the "gay marriage" controversy. ...It would be remiss not to mention here the similarities of TDickCC to the plot and style and paranoia of "The Manchurian Candidate"; --m