Once in Washington Nixon works with the House Un-American Activities Committee investigating Whittaker Chambers’ accusations against U.S. State Department official Alger Hiss.

Through subsequent study of Hiss’s papers, Nixon learns of a government project called Blue Ox, being run out of isolated Pawtuxet Farm in rural Massachusetts.

Nixon withdraws from politics after losing the 1960 presidential election to John F. Kennedy and failing in his 1962 bid for Governor of California, but he is drafted to run again for president by Henry Kissinger, in reality a millennia-old wizard.

— showing the president his lair under the Pentagon is a delightful tip of the sorcerer’s hat to Dr. Strangelove.”[5] Novelist Elizabeth Hand offered qualified praise in her review for the Los Angeles Times, writing, "The most impressive aspect of the novel is how Grossman creates a nuanced, funny and moving characterization of a man reviled during (and after) his term of office," although she was more critical of the book's pacing.

[6] io9's Annalee Newitz praised Crooked alongside Linda Nagata's The Red, saying, "There’s a lot of sardonic humor in the retelling of Nixon’s career as a supernatural thriller, leading up to the ghoulish apocalypse of Watergate, [b]ut there’s also genuine insight into what motivates politicians, and how a lifetime spent clawing to get to the White House will drive people mad as surely as Cthulhu does.