Cain and Mencken are investigating the deaths and sex scandals in 1923 in the season before the big Teapot Dome scandal breaks. Playing Holmes and Watson, they take the train to DC to get the real scoop. They drink a lot, meet a mysterious redhead, a rogue, and get a lot more than they bargained for.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Review
"A total delight to anyone who is a fan of Cain, Mencken, politics or the never-ending saga of human folly."-The Washington Post
". . .it's hard to shake the feeling that you've had a peek at real history: Is this all merely well-told fiction, or did Cain learn facts from Mencken that in turn were shared with Hoopes?"-John W. Dean, author of Blind Ambition
"The biggest challenge the reader faces in Our Man is believing that the incredible plot is based so heavily on fact-while also remembering that this is not a contemporary novel. Consider the key plot elements: suicides suspected by many to be murder, oil money payoffs, corrupt politicians, sex in the White House coat closet, illegitimate offspring, jobs swapped for campaign money. Fortunately, the inclusion of a lively subplot involving the Hope Diamond helps the reader stay firmly in the right decade."--The Washington Post
". . .it's hard to shake the feeling that you've had a peek at real history: Is this all merely well-told fiction, or did Cain learn facts from Mencken that in turn were shared with Hoopes?"-John W. Dean, author of Blind Ambition
"The biggest challenge the reader faces in Our Man is believing that the incredible plot is based so heavily on fact-while also remembering that this is not a contemporary novel. Consider the key plot elements: suicides suspected by many to be murder, oil money payoffs, corrupt politicians, sex in the White House coat closet, illegitimate offspring, jobs swapped for campaign money. Fortunately, the inclusion of a lively subplot involving the Hope Diamond helps the reader stay firmly in the right decade."--The Washington Post
About the Author
Roy Hoopes lives in the Washington DC area.
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
An entertaining political novel,
By
This review is from: Our Man in Washington (Hardcover)
Although the story line of this book is Pres. Harding's administration in the early 1920s, there is a relevance to today's presidential political scene. For example, Harding engaged in illicit sexual affairs which the author exemplifies by Harding's "jollying" of a young women in a White House broom closet. Pres. Clinton did his in the oval office. Also Harding was not one of this nation's most intelligent presidents. And in the current presidential election there is a question about the intelligence of one of the candidates. The author chose a real person,H. L. Mencken to conduct a fictionalized investigation of the corruption in Harding's administraion. The author also tries to depict Mencken as he revealed himself in his writings and as he was depicted in his biographies. Mencken, perhaps the nation's most famous iconoclast who had an opinion on everything in American society, relishes his role in this book of observing and commenting on the morons and clowns in Harding's administration known as the "Ohio Gang" who Harding brought with him to Washington. They are also real people who appear in the book. Harding's attorney general was tried twice for his misdeeds. His secretary of the interior and his director of the the Veterans Bureau were imprisoned. Mencken is paired with another real person, James Cain, who is best know for his hard-boiled crime fiction. This duo takes the reader on an entertaining tour of Harding's corrupt Washington. And along the way readers will meet such literary notables as Henry Luce and Sinclair Lewis. There is also a fictionalized sexual affair by Cain and a real woman who was the darling of the Washington press corp when she testified in real life against Harding's attorney general at a senate hearing. The entertaining part of this novel are Mencken's conversatins which permeate the book
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