Jake Tapper proves he has the page-turning knack in his entertaining debut novel ... Tapper has a flair for Mad Men-esque ’50s flourishes, though he writes through a modern prism that can be jarring ... It’s only April, but Tapper’s thriller has beach-read written all over it. And I think the author has a good feeling about Charlie Marder’s future (as he should), because this Club ends with an invitation to a sequel.
As openings go, this is terrific — a handful of taut pages steamed with confusion, sex and dread. But no sooner does Charlie climb out of that ditch than this novel careens into another one and stays there, spinning its wheels for 150 pages of leaden back story before we finally arrive again at that fateful morning crash ... Once all this cloak-and-dagger is methodically laid out, The Hellfire Club finally lurches into the crazy Dan Brownish adventure it was meant to be ... As the country’s future hangs in the balance, Tapper dutifully attends to the clashing racial attitudes of the era. Charlie, precocious as ever, possesses all the enlightened attitudes of a Brooklyn barista in 2018...I’m not complaining. The Hellfire Club is most enjoyable when it’s most groan-worthy.
As a novelist, he makes the rookie mistake of loading every interesting fact he could muster into a plot that can barely support the weight ... Tapper’s interweaving of the usual motives of power and money with the much more sinister pressures of the Red Scare ought to make for much more excitement than it does. It doesn’t help that some characters are so conventionally drawn ... Tapper’s awkwardness with his fictitious characters can improve. His acuity with historical resonance doesn’t have to ... Tapper did not have to include endnotes clarifying facts he modified and details on sources, but the notes are very winning. They reveal his tremendous enthusiasm for this work.
Tapper is obviously not only a politics addict but a history geek. Fans of such authors as Dan Brown and Brad Meltzer will recognize elements like clues hidden in paintings and old documents, which characters will pause to explicate before getting back to the chases and shootouts that escalate as the book goes on. The politicians in The Hellfire Club spend so much time plotting against each other it’s a wonder they get any work done at all, although maybe that’s realistic ... And the author has some distracting tics — it’s really not necessary to remind us that Margaret is pregnant every single time she’s mentioned. But The Hellfire Club’s fast pace and brio carry the story along. And if, like me, you’re fascinated by our nation’s political history, The Hellfire Club is hot summer reading.
Tapper is a professed history buff who has done copious research, and it shows, often obtrusively. Famous figures of the day (Hey, there’s Jack Kennedy! Look, it’s Lyndon Johnson! That Joe McCarthy can be awfully charming!) wander in and out, and a good chunk of the book feels like leaden exposition for those who never cracked a textbook. The dialogue can be clunky ... And yet you’ll overlook these eye-rollers when the action heats up ... Perfect for an airplane or the beach, The Hellfire Club is a worthy distraction from the real-life news cycle Tapper presides over.
...his writing has a relaxed, flowing quality. But in surrounding his protagonist with heavy hitters, including Jack and Bob Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Joseph McCarthy, and Roy Cohn, Tapper falls into the old foreground/background trap: Nothing in Marder's story, as fraught with personal tension as it may be, can measure up to the stories of the people to whom he is in thrall ... Tapper's backstage portrayal of Capitol Hill circa 1954 is breezy and knowing but lacks the ingredients that would make it a successful political thriller.
...[an] intriguing if uneven political thriller ... Tapper, whose intimate knowledge of Washington is undeniable, initially spends more time building up the Communist-hunting ambience of the 1950s than developing the plot, but once Marder closes in on a secret society and its tentacles within the government, the action rapidly picks up. Fans of well-researched historicals will be rewarded.
