SYNOPSIS:

Seven years after investigative journalist Daniel Mahler was publicly discredited and forced into hiding over false allegations in an article on Mob-financed charities, blogger Daniel Post receives an anonymous package: a Betamax video cassette of a no-budget porno film made in the 1980s. Its star: an ingenue named Cassidy Cummings, who's a dead ringer for glamorous Senator and current Presidential hopeful, Charlene Hendricks. The Senator is riding high in the polls - thanks in part to a less than glowing campaign conducted by her main rival, Treasury Secretary Felton Luster. But life for Charlene isn't all roses. She and her 10-year old daughter Piper are conducting their affairs in the absence of the girl's father, Philip Hendricks - who's at a private clinic in a chemically-induced coma, recuperating from injuries sustained in a horrific collision with a long-distance cargo transport. The Senator is getting heat from another source: Bondai Petrovich, a casino owner whose legitimate businesses (and those of his confreres) are a mask for activities of a darker kind. Namely, the abduction and trafficking of young girls over national and international borders, for use in various aspects of the sex industry. Petrovich's cartel has made an "unofficial contribution" of $100 million to Senator Hendricks - on the condition that she withdraw from the Presidential race. Charlene has taken the money, but is still very much in the running. Fearing a backlash of public sympathy in the wake of further tragedies in the Senator's life, Petrovich is mandated to adopt more subtle methods of persuasion to get Charlene to concede. Meanwhile, Daniel Post is mourning a tragedy of his own: the destruction in a freak electrical incident of the Betamax tape, and the machine which was used to play it. Desperate to get the full story, Daniel raises the issue on his crusading blog, "The Post." And receives the first of a series of cryptic clues from a contributor known only as Nostalgia84 - which take him on a cross-country trail of events whose dramatic conclusion occurs on the night of the election.

FIRST PAST THE POST