Readers of my other fiction will remember Jack Ziegler as the villain of The Emperor of Ocean Park. His backstory is slightly different there than it is here, but Ziegler was always skilled at inventing a cover. Of course the heroic Major Madison of the instant novel is the Colonel Madison of Emperor, Misha Garland’s father-in-law: his daughter Kimberly, a toddler here, grows up to be Misha’s ambitious wife. Vera Madison is also in both novels, as is little Marilyn, who by the time of Emperor is known as Lindy. Agent Stilwell, the conduit to J. Edgar Hoover, plays a similar role in Palace Council. Eddie Wesley, mentioned briefly here as Claudia Jensen’s godson, features prominently in that book. There, as here, he works briefly in the Kennedy White House, exiting well before the events in the present story. Torie Elden, who oversees Margo’s work at the Labor Department, is present in several of Palace’s scenes. And poor Tristan Hadley, dismissed as an idiot by Lorenz Niemeyer in chapter 3 of the instant tale, is in Palace Council the spurned suitor of Aurelia Treene. Finally, readers of my novel Jericho’s Fall will of course know what fate awaited Jericho Ainsley later in life.