NEW YORK (Nov. 8) - A steamy novel by Lewis "Scooter" Libby has become a hot item now that Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff is under indictment.

An inscribed copy of "The Apprentice: A Novel," which Libby wrote in 1996 when he was a relative unknown outside Washington, was on sale on online bookseller Amazon.com on Monday for $2,400. Unsigned hardcover copies were going for $700.

Now out of print, the novel tells the story of an innkeeper apprentice in a bizarre coming-of-age story set in Japan in 1903. It is littered with edgy sexual material and strong language.

"Wow, who would have thought that clean living, family values man Scooter Libby was capable of writing such filth," said one reviewer on Amazon. Another Amazon reviewer noted its "lavish dollops of voyeurism, bestiality, pedophilia and corpse robbery."

Libby was charged last month with perjury in a special prosecutor's probe into how a CIA operative's identity was leaked to journalists.

Libby's writing skills also happened to be displayed in a widely published letter to reporter Judith Miller of The New York Times that showed a flair for literary allusion and ambiguity.

"Out West, where you vacation, the aspens will already be turning. They turn in clusters, because their roots connect them," he wrote to Miller as she sat in jail earlier this year for refusing to reveal Libby's identity as a source.

11/07/05 23:42 ET