This intriguing novel brings us to a future in which electricity is scarce and Dublin has gone to seed. Hawk-eyed octogenarian Monk is keeping assorted desperate characters under strict surveillance -- among them Schroeder, recently sacked from Trinity College, now stalking a reporter in the days leading up to the visit of the U. S. President. When the unthinkable happens and the President is assassinated, Monk sets about discovering what''s happened to those in his care and, along the way, to the late President -- but this is not, he insists, the story of an assassination. Nor is it a thriller. It''s the truth.