The Solomon Scandals
The Solomon Scandals is a Washington newspaper novel. This book is, yes, fiction. But it was inspired by such history as a powerful senator’s secret investment in a CIA-occupied building in Northern Virginia, as well as an unrelated building collapse.
CIA skulduggery. Hundreds dead in a fallen 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.
Simply put, The Solomon Scandals serves up a mix of suspense, thrills and satire that you won’t find in any other Washington novels. It is a genre-bender with touches of science fiction and even Jewish fiction. Author David Rothman tells the story in the form of a Stone’s newspaper memoirs–discovered by a multiracial great-grandniece, Rebecca Kitiona-Fenton, Ph.D., of the Institute for the Study of Previrtual media. What other D.C. newspaper novel ends with a talking Afghan Hound named Thackeray II doing a Harry Truman act at the Cosmos Club in the late 21st century?
“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 Fellows, author of Breaking the News
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