The Devil May Dance

December 1, 2020

Award-winning CNN anchor Tapper brings back Charlie and Margaret Marder of The Hellfire Club, soon to be a TV series on HBO MAX. The Sixties politicos are asked by Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy to investigate a threat to the country's security, which brings them to Hollywood, the Rat Pack, and the brand-new Church of Scientology.

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Starred review from March 29, 2021
Set in 1962, Tapper’s excellent sequel to 2018’s The Hellfire Club opens with a highly effective tease. New York congressman Charlie Marder is in a California cemetery along with his wife, Margaret, and members of the Rat Pack, including Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin, who chose the grim locale to mark the passing of mobster Lucky Luciano. After the gathering ends, the Marders return to their rental car, only to find the body of an unnamed woman both of them knew in the trunk, her eyes shot out. On that cliffhanger, Tapper flashes back a month to New York City, where Marder gets a disturbing call from his political fixer father, Winston, who has been arrested for consorting with gangsters. During their brief jailhouse talk, Winston asks Marder to find out what Attorney General Robert Kennedy wants “and give it to him.” That turns out to be information on the relationships between Mafia leaders and Hollywood stars, such as Sinatra. The plot eventually circles back to the female corpse. Tapper makes good use of the rich source material. Fans of Max Allan Collins’s Nathan Heller books will be pleased. Agent: Robert Barnett, Williams & Connolly.

May 1, 2021
California in the early 1960s. Congressman Charlie Marder is doing a favor for Robert Kennedy, but it's not a typical favor that a congressman might do for an attorney general. Charlie's in Hollywood cozying up to Frank Sinatra, trying to learn what connection the singer might have to the notorious mobster Sam Giancana. Well, if you're going to be friends with Sinatra, that means you're friends with the whole Rat Pack, and this hugely entertaining sequel to 2018's The Hellfire Club is full of larger-than-life famous people: Sinatra, Peter Lawford, Sammy Davis Jr., Dean Martin, Shirley MacLaine, and more. The book has a thoroughly involving story--Charlie finds himself in some serious jeopardy--and Tapper, best known as a news anchor for CNN, is clearly having a great time re-creating Tinseltown in the Swinging Sixties. Recommend this one to Robert J. Randisi's Rat Pack series, including You Make Me Feel So Dead (2013), in which Sinatra and pals ""chaperone"" Elvis in Vegas.

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