Below are excerpts from Michael Pastore’s review in Epublishers Weekly.

“Three things about this novel impressed me. Real settings (D.C. by someone who knows it intimately), and real events…are skillfully interweaved with the fictional characters and plot. The book’s women are especially likable: they radiate that screwball-comedy pizzazz a la Roz Russell’s Hildy Johnson in the film His Girl Friday. And humor: though the theme could hardly be more serious—and the book’s conclusion comes as a sad but inevitable shock—this is often a subtly funny book. Stone getting grilled by his meddling parents, and the first meeting between the honest reporter and his sleazy subject are two scenes that made me laugh out loud.

“…all the corruption we could ever desire—artistically rendered and skillfully told—is tucked inside the pages of The Solomon Scandals. Financial rip-offs and large-scale shady deals may always be with us. But they are far more fun to read between the covers of a well-written novel, than on the front pages of our troubled newspapers and magazines.”

Related: Ted Scheinman’s review in The Washington City Paper, where he says that Scandals narrator Jonathan Stone spins “characterizations of D.C. with the same dark zeal Hammett held for Frisco or Chandler had for Los Angeles.”

Note: EPublishers Weekly is not associated with PW.