A great read about a reporter who uncovers corruption at the highest levels of government. Fast-paced, well written and keeps you hooked until the end.

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Product Description

CIA skulduggery. Hundreds imperiled in a rickety IRS building. Corruption and blackmail from the Oval Office. D.C.-quirky sex scandals. A gossip columnist's suicide. The death of a shark-like editor in a car bombing. Reporter Jonathan Stone lives through it all, until one day he forsakes Washington for Hollywood to write history disguised as conspiracy movies.

The Solomon Scandals is fictitious but draws inspiration from reality. U.S. Senator Abraham Ribicoff actually held a hidden investment in the CIA-occupied Key Building, in Arlington, Virginia, and 14 workers died in the Skyline high-rise collapse at Bailey s Crossroads.

Scandals' mix of suspense and satire also sets it apart from many other Washington novels. The Sy Solomon in the title is a former bricklayer turned real estate tycoon who leases acres and acres of office space to the federal government. Tens of thousands of bureaucrats work in his buildings. He has two fingertips missing, but scores and scores of powerful friends in the White House and on Capitol Hill. "Decency," Solomon says when asked about his campaign donations to Republicans and Democrats alike, "it's the first thing I look for in a politician. Please, try to understand. Do you want another Watergate?"

The plot heats up when Stone, the reporter protagonist, discovers that Solomon has stinted on construction of the Vulture's Point complex on the Potomac River, and he risks his career to try to get the story of the threatened collapse into the Washington Telegram before the building can fall down. Along the way, he is aided by Margo Danialson, a medieval studies major trapped within the bureaucracy at the General Services Administration, the agency Solomon has bought off.

In his investigation, Stone must struggle with resistance from his own father, who works for a PR and lobbying firm representing a bank that has financed Solomon's projects.

So does the building collapse with IRS and CIA workers inside, and what comes to light about it and the people involved? Does George McWilliams, Jon's editor, have any connection with Vulture's Point, beyond his social ties with Solomon? And what about Stone's friend Wendy Blevin, the Vassar-educated gossip columnist? Is her romantic life in some way linked to the building and the scandals behind it?

If you're familiar at all with Washington and its ways, you'll nod at the observations that Scandals makes. This D.C. is not the mystical city--of white stone monuments and secret ceremonies--that one reviewer saw in The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown. Instead it is the city of lawyers and lobbyists, strategically targeted campaign gifts, and other "practical" concerns. "I remembered the stares we had drawn, when we'd dined two weeks earlier at Chez François, from a fortyish mesomorph in a thousand-dollar suit," Stone says of a meal with an old girlfriend. "Might he have been gauging the worth of my Garfinckel's attire and his chances of outbidding me? Women, real estate, and legislation--the holy trinity of the Washington marketplace."

Recommending Scandals, the Washington City Paper says that "we get to relish his [Rothman's] chatty first-person narrator spinning characterizations of D.C. with the same dark zeal Hammett held for Frisco or Chandler had for Los Angeles." Scandals is available as both a trade paperback and an electronic book, and of the latter, the City Paper observes: "It's hard to call an e-book a page-turner--novels like The Solomon Scandals require a new word."

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2767548 in Books
• Published on: 2009-01-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Perfect Paperback
• 252 pages

Review
The Solomon Scandals is a mordantly entertaining book that broadens the cast of the standard Washington novel beyond spymasters and politicians to include real estate barons and federal contract officers. David Rothman's detailed knowledge of the D.C. scene comes through in his satire. Scandals is set in yesterday's Washington, but is about truths behind today's headlines--and about the troubled newspapers that publish the headlines. Like Boomsday and others of the best recent Washington novels, it amuses while broadening our understanding of how today's government works and doesn't. --James Fallows, author of Breaking the News, in advance comments

There is exquisite detail attached to the major characters in the book. Social class, regional dialect, gender and non-verbal communication patterns have clearly been given deep thought...Some fascinating plot twists occur so the element of suspense stays strong throughout the read.... An odd, murky charm...recalls The Maltese Falcon... --Lisa Torem, Pennyblackmusic

Tracing the conscientious reportage of hard-nosed Washington Telegram correspondent Jon Stone, Rothman's thriller weaves together society gossip, zoning reportage, and union grumblings into a pulp-ish web of international intrigue. Stone is the Cassandra of the D.C. press corps--his hunches mocked, his scoops unpublished until it's too late. In the meantime, we get to relish his chatty first-person narrator spinning characterizations of D.C. with the same dark zeal Hammett held for Frisco or Chandler had for Los Angeles. --Ted Scheinman, Washington City Paper

About the Author
David Rothman grew up in the D.C. area, went to the University of North Carolina and worked as a reporter for the Journal in Lorain, Ohio, where he covered poverty and public housing and was a feature writer. Among other stories, Rothman chronicled the aftermath of the Kent State massacre, which actually comes up in The Solomon Scandals, even though this is by far a Washington novel. Rothman's reporting on Sen. Abraham Ribicoff's secret investment in a CIA-occupied building made the NBC Nightly News. Rothman is the author of six nonfiction books and lives with his wife, Carly, in Alexandria, Virginia.

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Customer Reviews

Very Realistic Read
Very interesting and realistic read; especially if you live in the DC area. I particularly liked the character development especially of the principle antagonist. I won't spoil the ending but it'll get your attention

Well constructed in theme, plot, character, and historical sensitivity
David Rothman is a friend and I'm not an unbiased reviewer, but I genuinely enjoyed this thriller and found it great fun, as well as providing some interesting intellectual fodder. It will appeal particularly to people who care about honest politics and hard-hitting journalism, about people familiar with life and culture in Washington, DC, and to Jews interested in how a Jew should deal with moral and procedural problems. Those three traits happen to characterize both David and myself, but you'll find a lot if you fit any one of the traits--and maybe even if you fit none of them.