For better or worse, there’s nothing like a scandal to rile people up about the political status quo. The Canadian senate, viewed by the public with begrudging apathy at the best of times, is a reliable source of that most reliable of political scandals: unelected officials using taxpayer money for questionable ends. And there’s nothing that sparks a journalist’s predatory instincts like a good corruption story. Dan Leger’s book is scathing not only for these typical reasons, but also because it allows him to take some vindictive shots at a man who turned his back on the very media that made him a household name.

While he brings relatively little new information to the sordid story, Leger compiles the most pertinent facts into a clear and accessible narrative. Structured as a biography of the PEI-born media personality turned senator, Duffy paints a distinctly unflattering picture of an egoist and opportunist, “a partisan for no cause other than that of Mike Duffy.” Settling too comfortably into the upper echelons of Canadian political life, “Old Duff” eventually leaped over the line separating journalism from partisanship. As a senator, he willingly assumed the role of party hack. In Leger’s version of the story, this progression seems almost teleological. It is unclear, however, whether Duffy’s rise to political grace was the result of a premeditated plan on his part, or simply a case of seduction by power, influence, and money. Whichever it might be, money won out and, in the end, got out of Duffy’s control.

Much to his credit, Leger expands the scope of his ire to encompass the senate itself and its treatment by the Harper government. He tells the tale of an institution whose very structure seems to tempt, if not outright induce, a fast and loose approach to taxpayer money and personal culpability. And, by elucidating various members of the Harper government’s attempts to cover up for Duffy, Leger lays bare a government that trumpets accountability and transparency only when they do not constitute a political liability. Leger’s book is about a man who, more than a player or victim of the political game, is a symptom of a faulty system.