Synopsis

Heidi Scherzinger is just a typical working girl in Chicago in 1972. Well, maybe not so typical. In fact, she’s running Chicago’s most successful independent call girl outfit when she’s summoned to meet with Sonny Battaglia, the country’s most powerful Mob boss.

The other local call girl agencies are complaining about her success, so Sonny offers her a deal: either she gets whacked, or she relocates to Washington, D.C., where she’ll be working for the “Agency” under the control of the creepy Sidney Gottshalk, the resident blackmail specialist.

The Agency wants blackmail material on all the horny Democrats flooding the Capitol in the run-up to the presidential election, trying to defeat President Nicholas Dixon as he runs for a second term.

The always efficient Heidi quickly sets up a first-class operation, aided by the quietly competent Milton Greenbaum. What follows is a Florence Gump-style adventure through a 1970s Washington, D.C., that might be just a little different than the version you read about in your history books.

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Excerpt

My Life Now – November 21, 2024

Most of those who’d want to kill me for telling this story are either dead or living in a nursing home.

I’m not dead, I’m not in a nursing home, but I am living in a “senior community.”

I’m the kind of woman you’ll often see is such a setting, teaching a morning and afternoon Pilates class, then checking out a lecture or play in the evening with her friends. I dress immaculately, my hair and makeup are always perfect, people often wonder if I’m in my mid-fifties or early sixties, (seventy-six, thank you very much) and truth be told, often getting propositioned by the Viagra crowd of men convinced they’ve still got it.

The truth is I’ve always loved sex and I’m pretty good at getting men and women to fall in love with me. But I’ve also mastered the art of convincing a person I’m fascinated by them, while at the same time remaining just out of reach. They know I’ll come and play for a few hours, especially if the money and conversation is good.

And there’s nobody better than me, man or woman, at listening to what the powerful are really saying while they’re trying to get me into bed, or do the commitment thing (no, thank you). That’s why I was on the payroll of the Agency for such a long time, although, truth be told, most of them are a bunch of psychotic morons.

You might call me a prostitute, call girl, hooker, or even a whore if you’re feeling particularly righteous, but I prefer the term courtesan.

Everything in life can be done poorly, or with style.

For example, President John Francis Fitzgerald did everything with a certain devil-may-care nonchalance, from bedding beautiful actresses to getting himself shot in Texas.

By contrast, President Nicholas Milhous Dixon could find the grey cloud on the

sunniest of days, and that partially explains how he went from winning the biggest landslide in American history to resigning in disgrace a year and a half later.

I say only partially, because there’s the part I played, that nobody’s ever really understood. You see, I’m the woman who’s been whispered about for years, the main player in the story you thought you knew, protected by forces more powerful than you can imagine.

But was it really my fault?

Maybe after fifty years it’s time to finally tell the story.

I’ll let you be the judge of whether I’m a hero or a villain.

– Excerpted from This Never Happened by Kent Heckenlively, Manhattan Book Group, 2026. Reprinted with permission.

About the Author

Kent Heckenlively is an attorney, science teacher, and two-time New York Times bestselling author. He is best known as coauthor of the Plague series – Plague, Plague of Corruption & Ending Plague) with Dr. Judy Mikovits and Dr. Francis Ruscetti, winner of the Distinguished Service Medal from the National Institutes of Health. His book, Plague of Corruption reached #2 on the New York Times Bestseller list in June of 2020, has sold more than 200,000 copies to date, and is being turned into a documentary narrated by Liam Neeson. Kent has published numerous non-fiction books, focusing on the tech sector, controversies in medicine, and media bias.

His most recent two books, Twilight of the Shadow Government and Catastrophic Disclosure, focus on government corruption.

This Never Happened is his third novel and reflects his belief that we all need a fun book for the summer. With more than 15,000 Amazon reviews, a 4.7 average ranking out of 5.0 stars, more than 750,000 of his books in print, critical praise from Kirkus Reviews, including a highly coveted, “Kirkus preferred review” for his book on interferon, as well as his books being translated into ten languages, Kent is quickly becoming a powerhouse in the literary world.

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