The Solomon Scandals

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CIA skullduggery. 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 yummy mix of suspense, thrills and satire that you won't find in any other Washington novels. It is a brilliantly imagined 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? But most of Scandals happens in the 1970s. Jon Stone investigates Seymour Solomon, a major campaign contributor to the President and also a close friend of George McWilliams', Stone's editor. A former bricklayer turned real estate tycoon, Solomon leases acres and acres of office space to the federal government. Tens of thousands of bureaucrats work in his building, including a rickety complex on the Potomac River known as Vulture's Point. Stone discovers that Solomon has stinted on construction of the Vulture's, and he risks his career try to to get the story into the Washington Telegram. 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. So what comes to light after the building collapse? Does McWilliams have any connection with it, 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? In his investigation, earlier in the book, 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. Herbert Stone sees Solomon as a pillar of the local and national Jewish communities. Remembering the era of Gentleman's Agreements and overt anti-Semitism in America, he worries about the damage that Jon's expose might do. Jon, on the other hand, believes that if he protects Solomon for religious reasons, he could unwittingly provide fodder for bigots someday. The Solomon Scandals is Rothman's debut novel-begun 30 years ago and inspired by such history as a powerful Senator's secret investment in a CIA-occupied building in Northern Virginia. Rothman's revelations made the NBC and ABC evening news.