"THE handshake is the threshold act, the beginning of politics. I've seen him do it two million times now, but I couldn't tell you how he does it, the right handed part of it - the strength, quality, duration of it the rudiments of pressing the flesh. I can, however, tell you a whole lot about what he does with his other hand. He is a genius with it. He might put it on your elbow, or up by your biceps; these are basic, reflexive moves. He is interested in you. He is honoured to meet you... He'll flash that famous, misty look of his. And he will mean it."
This is as good a description of how Bill Clinton presses the flesh as ever I have seen. But I can't tell you who wrote it. It appears in the opening chapter of a superbly written book by "Anonymous", which has the whole of Washington guessing about the author's identity.
Primary Co tours is a devastating fictionalised account of the 1992 presidential campaign. The candidate is Jack Stanton, the calculating, sincere, draft dodging, over eating, seductive governor of a small southern state, who manages to survive the New Hampshire primary despite a bimbo eruption featuring "Cashmere McLeod", aka Gennifer Flowers.
Other well known characters from the campaign are easily recognisable. Campaign strategist James Carville is "Richard Jemmons", "manic, obsessive, very strange looking"; Hillary's lawyer pal Susan Thomases is "Lucille Kauffman", an "antic conspirer... awful beyond imagining"; New York Governor Mario Cuomo is "Orlando Ozio", a "powerful, big hall speaker" whose "histrionics didn't work so well in a smallroom." Mr Cuomo hates the book.
Primary Colours describes the campaign as it must have appeared to George Stephanopolous, Clinton's WhiteHouse aide, who says the accuracy of some of the private campaign scenes is "eerie beyond belief".
Others close to the 1992 political shenanigans say the same. In the book, Jemmons speculates that Stanton had oral sex but not intercourse with Cashmere McLeod. "That's what Carville privately thought about Clinton and Gennifer Flowers" said journalist Mark Miller, who travelled with the Clinton caravan as an insider to chronicle events for Newsweek. "How did the author know?"
The writer has many near verbatim accounts of events witnessed by only a few campaign aides. Mr Carville suggests it is by someone with access to Miller's notes. Miller himself denies he is the culprit.
Not since Watergate's "Deep Throat" has the capital been so obsessed about a secret identity. Larry King had five of the chief suspects on his CNN programme all denied it, though consultant Paul Begala looked very suspicious protesting that he had not even read the book.
President Clinton is joining the real life game of "Clue". He challenged reporters to find out who wrote it, saying it is "the only secret I've seen kept in Washington in three years".
Only the literary agent, Kathy Robbins of New York, knows the author's name. The publisher, Harold Evans of Random House, is in the dark. He signed a contract barring himself from speculating about the identity of a gifted writer with a wicked imagination and a Tom Wolfe calibre talent.
The book has gone through six printings in two weeks and tops the Washington Post's best selling fiction list. Some say it should be displayed in shops under non fiction.
Almost 100 suspects have been identified by White House veterans and all have denied it, hand on heart (or wallet). The amateur sleuths - i.e. everyone who sits round a dinner table in Washington - combine their theories: the author was a disloyal "Friend off Bill", he or she is not in the media because no journalist can resist a byline, and is not a politician because they can't resist book tours - how do you sign an anonymous book?
It must be a woman, say others, maybe media consultant Mandy Grunwald, who appears as Daisy", and whose sister Lisa Grunwald is a real life novelist. Ms Grunwald denies all and blames former Treasury official Roger Altman, who responded that the charge was "both f...ing and preposterous". Doonesbury cartoonist C Trudeau has been fingered, did seem awfully busy last year, said his wife, Jane Pauley.
A Washington book store, tics and Prose, is planning launch party next Saturday which all the suspects will be invited to read a paragraph, then we're going to vote," owner Carla Cohen.
ABC television news Mark Halperin has been trying crack the case for weeks with small group of insiders, and Mr Stephanopolous and Ms Grunwald.
"Stephanopolous and agreed," said Halperin, "if any one of us turns out to have any role in this, we'll call a press conference and renounce our faith humanity."