Where will be no Larry King Live stop for the author of Primary Colors, a February '96 novel that appears to be a not-so-veiled account of Bill Clinton's 1992 presidential race. When Random House bought the book (about a campaign worker troubled by his candidate's tactics) last April for a reported six figures, it accepted a strange proviso from agent Kathy Robbins: Her writer's identity had to remain a secret — Random House claims that even publisher Harry Evans is being kept in the dark.
The Deep Throat deal has triggered more inquiries than Whitewater. Among those suspected of authorship are three Robbins clients who covered the campaign, The New Yorker's Michael Kelly and Sidney Blumenthal and Newsweek's Joe Klein — though all three have denied penning the book. ''I've published four books, and my name has been on each of them,'' says Blumenthal. ''Maybe my dog did it.'' But former Clinton campaign strategist James Carville smells a hype. ''If it was any good, it wouldn't be anonymous,'' says Carville. ''There were only about four or five of us who were in the know [during the race], and none of us wrote it, so it can't be very insider.''
Although Carville thinks it's probably a case of Republican sabotage, Daniel Menaker, the novel's editor-by-mail, denies partisanship. ''That is about the farthest thing possible,'' says Menaker. ''The writer didn't want his identity to interfere with the reception of the book. It's going to provoke debate in Washington. People are going to say, 'My God, this is Bill Clinton.'''
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