The Solomon Scandals A Washington newspaper novel by David Rothman

Overview of ‘The Solomon Scandals’

The Solomon Scan­dals is fic­ti­tious but draws inspi­ra­tion from reality.

U.S. Sen­a­tor Abra­ham Ribi­coff actu­ally held a hid­den invest­ment in a CIA-occupied build­ing, and 14 work­ers died in the Sky­line high-rise col­lapse at Bailey’s Cross­roads in North­ern Vir­ginia. In the left photo via Google, you can see the Key Build­ing, in Arling­ton, where Ribi­coff secretly owned a stake.

The Sy Solomon in the title is a for­mer brick­layer turned real estate tycoon who leases acres and acres of office space to the fed­eral gov­ern­ment. Tens of thou­sands of bureau­crats work in his build­ings. He has two fin­ger­tips miss­ing, but scores and scores of pow­er­ful friends in the White House and on Capi­tol Hill. “Decency,” Solomon says when asked about his cam­paign dona­tions to Repub­li­cans and Democ­rats alike, “it’s the first thing I look for in a politi­cian. Please, try to under­stand. Do you want another Watergate?”

The plot heats up when Jon Stone, the reporter pro­tag­o­nist, dis­cov­ers that Solomon has stinted on con­struc­tion of the Vulture’s Point com­plex on the Potomac River, and he risks his career to try to get the story of the threat­ened col­lapse into the Wash­ing­ton Telegram before the build­ing can fall down. 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.

• Plot
• Crooked politicians mean tumbling buildings—in countries from Egypt to China, not just U.S.
• What Epublishers Weekly says about ‘Scandals’
• Budd Schulberg, ‘What Makes Sammy Run?’ and ‘The Solomon Scandals’
• Major characters—from the real estate tycoon to the Spinoza-crazed reporter