In the summer of 1961, Senator Alan Ackerman and his wife Audrey are throwing a cocktail party. After all, with the blunders of JFK’s first months as president, it’s never too early to start getting one’s name out there for ’64, right?

This party, though, will turn Senator Alan’s career upside down. First, another mover-and-shaker senator is throwing a party on the very same night, the jerk. Second, the strange mix of Washington insiders who show up for the Ackermans’ party are all intertwined in Alan’s many secrets.

The most minor of those secrets—and the only one that Audrey, his wife, knows about—is that Alan accidentally bumped his car into the car of a Washington Post reporter, Sam Sigmund, breaking the taillight; but the senator didn’t stop to leave a note. On a somewhat different scale is the fact that Senator Alan has accepted bribes from industrialist Cal Carter of BMI Corp. As if that weren’t enough, the senator, whom Audrey unwittingly compares to Jimmy Stewart in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, has also been rubber-stamping finance requests from General Bill Blake in exchange for military secrets. Then Alan’s been passing those military secrets along to CIA executive Earl Etheridge for intel on political opponents.

Shy, decent, oppressed-spouse Audrey is nervous about acting as party hostess. But she looks forward to seeing Sam, the handsome reporter who flirts with her. Audrey’s excuse for inviting Sam is her guilt about the taillight, but Alan is furious. “That's all I need—a reporter, snooping around in my own home!”

The competing soiree leaves the Ackermans’ party smaller than hoped. The party-goers who do arrive, though, are bound together in a web of secrets, shenanigans, and lies. Thrown into this mix is Sally, a secretary. Sally is no “insider,” but she loves a good party. She also has a knack for inadvertently making things happen.

Over the course of the night’s cocktail-lubricated gossip, dancing, and party games, the web unravels in ways that are wild, comical, and more than a little dangerous.