The Librarian: A Novel [Paperback]

Larry Beinhart (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 26, 2004

How on earth did nebbish university librarian David Goldberg end up on Virginia's Ten Most Wanted Criminals list for bestiality? And how did he get ensnared in a vast right-wing conspiracy to steal the presidency? It all begins so innocently when Goldberg starts moonlighting for eccentric, conservative billionaire Alan Carston Stowe as an archivist. But Goldberg's appointment worries a cabal of ruthless right-wingers—ostensibly allies of Stowe, whose money lubricates their zany scary conspiracies—with very close ties to the White House. They fear that Goldberg will find something in Stowe's records that will compromise the dirty tricks involved in re-electing Augustus Winthrop Scott, the dim scion of a powerful Republican political family, for a second term. As the presidential election heads into its final stretch, the hunt is on to remove Goldberg from his position—by any means necessary. The acclaimed, Edgar-winning mystery writer Larry Beinhart returns with this timely novel. In the tradition of Carl Hiassen, Elmore Leonard, and Joe Klein, The Librarian is a frenetic, scary and hilarious thriller that goes deep into the dark heart of election year politics.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Beinhart's first novel in a decade (the last, American Hero, became the film Wag the Dog) takes a worst-case scenario conceived by leftist conspiracy theorists and runs riotously rampant with it. The Octavian Institute, an evil think tank, controls the George W. Bush–-like president, Augustus Winthrop Scott, and has a plan for world domination called the Project for the New American Century. Holding the financial strings of Octavian is elderly magnate Alan Carston Stowe, who has seemingly endless circles of henchmen. Into this cabal wanders unsuspecting David Goldberg, the librarian of the title, moonlighting from his university library job at Stowe's private collection. A series of misunderstandings—involving, for starters, a horny horse and a flirtatious married beauty named Niobe—turn David into a hunted man. The chase story line counterpoints Scott's dirty (and highly criminal) campaign for re-election against morally upstanding Vietnam veteran Anne Lynn Murphy. The plot turns in funny directions—David, for example, teams up with fellow librarians Inga and Susanne to form a Mission Impossible–like squad—but it's a tribute to the Edgar-winning author that he never winks at the reader. Though some elements are over-the-top, a creepy feeling of plausibility persists, and comic as it is, the novel completely engages interest as a thriller from start to finish.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Mild-mannered university librarian David Goldberg decides to supplement his meager salary by cataloging the personal library of Augustus Winthrop Scott, an eccentric billionaire. The fact that Scott is an ultraconservative who thinks nothing of buying politicians and even stealing a presidential election does not bother Goldberg. He soon discovers, however, that the little bit of knowledge he gains from organizing Scott's personal papers puts him in great danger: Homeland Security is pursuing him, and the state of Virginia has charged him with bestiality. Following in the tradition of Carl Hiaasen and Elmore Leonard, Edgar-winner Beinhart effectively employs a combination of dark humor and frightening, outrageous plot twists that strike close to home in the era of the Patriot Act. Although the novel falls prey to some traditional stereotypes, especially in the portrayal of Goldberg's female colleagues, it is refreshing to encounter a political thriller with a librarian hero--not coincidentally a librarian, either, but one who uses his information skills to save the day. Barbara Bibel
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Nation Books (August 26, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1560256362
• ISBN-13: 978-1560256366
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.7 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (28 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #775,318 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars thorougly enjoyable thriller with an unlikely hero, August 10, 2005

By 

audrey (white mtns) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

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This review is from: The Librarian: A Novel (Paperback)

As a librarian and a liberal conspiracy theorist, I found The Librarian gratifying from page one. I stayed up reading until 5 am and then woke up three hours later to finish it. That hasn't happened to me in years.

David Goldberg is a university librarian working part-time for an elderly conservative billionaire whose co-conspirators are worried that Goldberg will find evidence of their plans to steal the presidential election.

With shifting viewpoints, Beinhart does a great job of capturing the mindset of a librarian, with his literary allusions and idealistic worldview, as well as the many crazies out to get him. There is an Oliver North/Gordon Liddy goon, an amoral Secretary of State reminiscent of Dick Cheney and a Supreme Court justice on the take. On the good guy's side -- quirky librarians out of their element as violent thugs begin to move in. Librarians are, by definition, at least a little idealistic which, in these corrupt times, puts them at a bit of a disadvantage; but they are also bright truth-seeking information technologists, so they're not exactly helpless either, and the confrontations between the two groups are believable in this fictional account.

Beinhart has a disconcerting talent for making sense of present and past political machinations, harkening back to Ronald Reagan, Ken Starr and the 2000 election as well as our current crop of ne'er-do-wells, positing plausible surmises about what their motives and actions are.

I hope this gets made into a movie, as the author's American Hero was. Part of the fun is trying to decide who will play the various parts.

One character I found particularly interesting was Hagopian, the Democratic candidate's political and media guru. I'm not sure who the real-life counterpart would be, but would love to know.

The verbal description of the president is absolutely hysterical and point after point deliciously skewers hypocritical chicken hawks and government employees who bash the government at every turn, including a "pugnacious pest exterminator"! It is wonderfully funny, though the fact that it is largely true also makes it infuriating.

The dedication to librarian Larry Berk, "whom God has mistaken for Job", was intriguing, particularly when Berk appears briefly in the book.

I thought the ending was a bit unsatisfactory (it wrapped up too quickly and we didn't hear from candidate Murphy or guru Hagopian in the last third of the book) and it could have used a better proofreading, but this book brought me hours of pleasure. I had to make a real effort not to read too many passages aloud to my husband so he can enjoy it on his own.

Highly recommended.

49 of 60 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars predictions already come true!, September 20, 2004

By 

Martin Voelker (Golden, Co) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Librarian: A Novel (Paperback)

I read the galleys of "The Librarian" in August 2004 and it absorbed me completely: ten minutes before 5 am, having started the previous evening I finally finished it (needless to say, not my best day at work followed 2 hours later). What struck me in a similar way than Beinhart's previous book, "American Hero", was his interweaving of facts any alert newspaper reader could have seen with a high paced fictional plot. The readers' problem of course is to sort the tales from the facts, and I so wished for footnotes (as used in American Hero). But how lucid, plausible and prescient Beinhart's novel really is became apparent when on September 7 Vice President Cheney did exactly what Beinhart's has his fictitional Republican administration do: proclaiming that if a Democrat is elected the US would face the threat of another terrorist attack. I'll wager that Beinhart didn't just get lucky: here's a writer with a very keen observation using the lower threshold of proof afforded to fiction writers to illuminate what the Bush administration (or any highly ideological ruling elite) is capable of. Beinhart's "Librarian" takes the gloves off. Personally, I found some of the violence described somewhat off-putting at first - until I remembered how Black Panthers were assassinated by police, how civil rights leaders were targeted then and are still now under new Patriot Act legislation. Under the democratic veneer power politics takes rather unpleasant forms.
On the more civil side readers will take away at least one excellent reminder, and a term to help remembering it for future reference: Early on Larry Beinhart introduces the memorable concept of the Fog Fact: open secrets that ought to be public knowledge and for which conclusive evidence has long since been presented but which still remain unsaid. Such as the fact that joining the National Guard was one of the methods for avoiding being sent into combat in Vietnam: not "patriotic service" but effective draft dodging.
Anyway, during those last weeks in the current presidential race I'll be curious to see whether the Democrats take some of the strategies employed by Beinhart's fictional Dems - that we'll see more of the more or less criminal moves by Goebbels' eager student Karl Rove is pretty much a given. Read the book and place your own bets on how or whether this election (again) will be stolen.
Martin Voelker

31 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The action-packed adventures of a librarian!, September 15, 2004

By 

Kenneth French (Montclair, NJ) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Librarian: A Novel (Paperback)

Being a librarian myself, I never thought I'd find a book that fit that particular description. But Beinhart has managed to weave his mild-mannered librarian hero into a web of political intrigue filled with evil right-wing conspirators and provocative women. Cudos to the author for making the librarians depicted interesting and sexy (even the one old woman librarian is revealed to have had a very active sex life in her younger days), not the usual stereotypes. My only small problems with it are that it could have been shorter by about 75 pages, and that the election-based plot is so thinly veiled that he may as well have called the incumbent "Bush" instead of "Scott". All in all, though a great read for anyone, not just librarians.