Update from The Solomon Scandals site:
The Georgetown name game: Roffman, Rothman, Solomon and The Georgetowner
http://www.solomonscandals.com/?p=3905
- D.R. 11/3/2009
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Set in D.C., the Solomon Scandals is David Rothman's debut novel—inspired by such history as a powerful Senator's secret investment in a CIA-occupied building. Rothman's revelations made the ABC and NBC evening news.
Today he lives in Alexandria, Virginia, with his wife, Carly. Visit him on the Web at SolomonScandals.com. The publisher is Twilight Times Press (423-323-0183).
Reviews and blurbs
"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 Stone is the Cassandra of the D.C. press corps—his hunches mocked, his scoops unpublished until it's too late.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 in the Washington City Paper
"Three things about this novel impressed me. Real settings (D.C. by someone who knows it intimately), and real events…are skillfully interwoven with the fictional characters and plot. The book’s women are especially likable: they radiate that screwball-comedy pizazz a la Roz Russell’s Hildy Johnson in the film His Girl Friday. And humor: though the theme could hardly be more serious—and the book’s conclusion comes as a sad but inevitable shock—this is often a subtly funny book. Stone getting grilled by his meddling parents, and the first meeting between the honest reporter and his sleazy subject are two scenes that made me laugh out loud." —Michael Pastore’s review in EPublishers Weekly (not part of PW)
"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 it is about truths behind today's headlines--and about the troubled newspapers that publish the headlines..." —James Fallows, author of Breaking the News.
"If only the cesspool of corruption Rothman plumbs so well in the past did not persist even today in Washington, where the first purpose of politics seems to remain the divvying up of spoils among secret cronies." —James Polk, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Watergate coverage for the Washington Star.
“David Rothman’s bright, breezy, face-paced, and funny novel shines a merciless spotlight on greed, skulduggery and fraud within government, catching President Bullard like a deer in the headlights. But what resonates with me, as a long-time investigative journalist, is protagonist Jonathan Stone’s nightmare in getting his explosive findings into print. Seemingly the Washington Post hungered for every syllable Woodward and Bernstein could dig up on Watergate. However, it’s not always that easy. Stone’s fictional struggle to write and publish his expose is more than a shadow of the truth.” —Bettina Gregory, former Washington correspondent, ABC News |