The Solomon Scandals A Washington newspaper novel by David Rothman

The Skyline collapse—and property rights vs. human life

Scan­dals at one level is a beach read, a mix of a thriller and novel of man­ners. But at another, it’s about bureau­cratic lax­ness, which can kill work­ers—not just drain investors’ bank accounts.The Deep­wa­ter Hori­zon dis­as­ter in the Gulf of Mex­ico makes Scan­dals all the more timely. Penny-pinching proved to be lethal. – D.R.

Four­teen work­ers died and 34 were injured in the real build­ing col­lapse that inspired the one in The Solomon Scan­dals.

The Sky­line Plaza dis­as­ter at Bailey’s Cross­roads in North­ern Vir­ginia hap­pened on March 2, 1973—the result, many said, of pre­ma­ture removal of con­crete shoring.

Fines amounted to just $300 for the shoring-related lapse and $13,000 for vio­la­tions of worker safety codes. Not so coin­ci­den­tally, an even worse dis­as­ter fol­lowed in West Vir­ginia just five years later, killing 51 work­ers in America’s most deadly con­struc­tion acci­dent.

The Sky­line death toll of 14 was minor com­pared to the calamity at the fic­ti­tious Vulture’s Point, the IRS/CIA build­ing that I located in the gen­eral area of Dyke Marsh, south of Alexan­dria. I added a hill and other topo­graph­i­cal fea­tures miss­ing from the actual site on the Potomac River. The nature-lover in the right photo is “stalk­ing the birds hid­ing in the cattails.”

Aided by Gor­don Bat­son of Clark­son Uni­ver­sity and M. Kevin Parfitt of Penn­syl­va­nia State Uni­ver­sity, I came up with my own causes for the Vulture’s Point dis­as­ter, which, unlike Sky­line, didn’t hap­pen dur­ing construction.

• Crooked politicians mean tumbling buildings—in countries from Egypt to China, not just U.S.
• Plot
• Overview of ‘The Solomon Scandals’
• Skyline Work Song: A poem by Andrew Solarz
• The Solomon Scandals novel vs. online gossip about Skyline Towers and the intel community