Reviews and Comments

An improved second in Tapper's political murders series

CNN journalist Jake Tapper turns in a rollicking page-turner for his second fiction outing, but still with some inherent flaws. In his followup to "The Hellfire Club" in his "Charlie and Margaret Marder mysteries" series, now it's 1961 the first year of the Kennedy presidency, with all the Cold War tensions of that time, and the fabulousness (on the surface; underneath quite different) of Hollywood, and the heyday of postwar, but still pre-British Invasion, pre-"The Sixties", Rat Pack entertainers.

As this is still Tapper's "Gary Stue & Mary Sue"-style self-insert storytelling style, this time instead of a somewhat clumsy homage being "Mr. (And Dr. Mrs) Smith Go to Washington - and solve murders" it's "Mr. and Mrs. Smith Go to Hollywood - and reveal darkness".

Despite my deliberate sarcasm about the series setup, I enjoyed this a lot. It "took me out of the story" far less than the just blatantly wrong things in the first book - like Charlie being appointed Congressmen due to a vacancy, when that's not how the Constitution works, and he even admits it in his notes at the end. Less "takes me out", that is, if one assumes that Charlie and Margaret don't just meet, but become great buddies with Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr, Peter Lawford, and the "Chairman of the Board" himself, Frank Sinatra. Not a spoiler - the book opens with all of them drunk in a graveyard!

The specific incidents in both Hollywood and DC, other than those main-plot-driving ones made up, either actually happened or something very similar did, and Tapper-as-newsman has pages of annotated references at the end.

It's worth the read, especially if you get it out of your public library, either physically, or as I did electronically (for either Kindle or as EPUB for all other reading apps/devices supporting Adobe DRM.) Not sure if it's worth buying unless on sale.