| Plot Summary of The Chancellor Manuscript |
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"Peter Chancellor becomes a writer after his doctoral thesis is rejected due to lack of facts to back up it's premise.He writes it as a novel due to the advise of a greatly admired man.This book and the ones that follow become best sellers.He is asked to write a book about the death of J.Edgar Hoover. This is how he becomes involved with "Inver Brass" a clandestine group.As he writes the book he finds he is living it.As in all Ludlum books there are many plot twists and turns right up to the last few pages.It is a real page turner."
James L. Chervenko, Resident Scholar
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"Peter Chancellor becomes a successful novelist after his thesis is rejected by the supervisory committee. His novels, though works of fiction, portray the happening of certain events that may not have happened the way the people believe they did.
A group of highly intellectual people known as “Inver Brass”, see a threat to their country, when they find out that John Edgar Hoover, the director of FBI is using scandal ridden private files as leverage. Hoover has compiled 1000 of dossiers on the most influential people in the USA. The group decides to get rid of Hoover and recover the files, for the purpose of which they hire a professional working with the NSA, named Varak. Hoover is taken care of. However, not all the dossiers are recovered, since someone has already gotten to them first. The question is “who” has the dossiers that can have devastating effect on the country's future. The group decides to find out. However, it is not easy going around asking questions in the upper echelons of Washington's elite. They decide to use Chancellor for the purpose, since his profession of a novelist is a natural cover for him.
Chancellor on the other hand is not the novelist he used to be. After, meeting with a terrible accident and loosing his fiancé, he is leading a broken life. But when Varak posing as a FBI agent, approaches him and hints towards the possibility that Hoover (who is thought to have died from a heart attack) may have been assassinated, the writer inside Peter awakens from a state of dormancy. Varak also feeds him with the information that the “scandal ridden dossiers” collected by Hoover are missing.
Peter decides to write a book on the last year of Hoover's life. However, for this he needs hard facts and for which he has to investigate into the existence of the scandal ridden dossiers.
The plot thickens when a number of people are blackmailed (using the information present in the dossiers). By doing so the blackmailer (who is a voice on the telephone, and possesses the scandal ridden dossiers) gains undue advantage, specifically in the political arena in Washington. Case in point, a journalist questioning the ways by which funds are being raised for the elections, is asked to give away the investigation. If not, certain facts about her will be publicized, ending her career as a journalist.
Peter starts writing the book. His investigations into the existence of the dossiers lead to him to unearth two secrets “The mystery behind the massacre of Chasong” (which took place during the Korean War) and “The true identity of the blackmailer”, which not only endangers his own life but also the life of the people he cares for.
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Yajnavalka Banerjee, Resident Scholar
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