Run Robbie Run by Jon Pepper
https://www.amazon.com/Run-Robbie-Jon-Pepper/dp/B0H116JL73
Jon Pepper’s political farce Run Robbie Run is a razor-sharp satire of an American political party at war with itself— and it’s wickedly funny.
Set during an election year nomination process, the novel follows two spectacularly unfit candidates: Dewey Fenwick, an 87-year-old former president who can barely stay conscious, and his successor Robbie Crowe, a lazy, self-absorbed billionaire who stumbles into the nomination without earning a single vote.
Pepper’s comic gifts are immediately on display.
The opening scene, in which campaign aides frantically try to rouse Dewey from a Golden Girls dream before television journalists arrive, is a masterclass in political absurdity. But the novel’s real engine is Robbie — a man so thoroughly unprepared for the presidency that when asked about his vision for America, he offers a few lyrics from What a Wonderful World and tells his aide to write it down.
The satire cuts in all directions.
The party machine, corrupt billionaire puppet-masters, a fawning media, campus radicals planning “mostly peaceful” firebombings at the Chicago convention — no faction escapes unscathed. The fictional surveillance program “America’s Just Rewards,” essentially a social credit system dressed up in loyalty-points marketing, provides the novel’s chilling undertow beneath all the comedy.
The supporting cast is superb: Dinda, the idealistic campaign intern who slowly realizes the party has no actual principles; Senator Hiram Fry, a straight-talking old warhorse who delivers the novel’s most sobering warnings; Lady Janice, the former First Lady desperate to return to the White House; and Marty, Robbie’s long-suffering aide whose deadpan exasperation carries the humor throughout.
Pepper writes with the confidence of someone who has watched Washington up close, and it shows.
Run Robbie Run is sharp, fast, and bracingly cynical — a comic novel that lands its punches because the absurdity never strays too far from reality.
About the author
Jon Pepper’s six novels form distinctive set of modern satirical fiction—mainly focused on business, politics, and popular culture. They have won praise from critics and readers alike for their humor, insight, clear prose, and brisk pacing.
Jon’s newest novel, “Run Robbie Run,” debuts June 16, 2026. It’s a fast, sharply comic political satire that aims its barbs at the modern campaign machine, media incentives, and the wealthy “do-gooder” class. One review observed: “What makes this work is the voice: brisk, confident, and unapologetically satirical. Pepper writes with a comedian’s timing and a columnist’s eye for hypocrisy.”
“Run Robbie Run” is Jon’s sixth novel. It follows his five-book series, “Fossil Feuds,” centered on the wealthy Crowe family’s New York-based energy empire. Intra-family warfare, executive rivalries, crosstown competitors, government regulators, and climate activists threaten to bring it all down. The Crowe family’s battles are sometimes petty, sometimes mean, but they’re always lively, amusing, and deeply human.
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