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How much does this man know? By Russ Smith In late April the New York Post’s Richard Johnson led Page Six with an intriguing item about a feud between the Washington Post’s Bob Woodward and Pete Earley, a former reporter at the paper who claims that the prolific author and journalist conspired to have him fired in 1986.The subject was Earley’s first novel, “The Big Secret,” in which the villain, Andrew Middleton, is a barely disguised and far more diabolical (one would assume) version of Mr.Woodward. That gossip factor is enough to make the first novel by Mr. Earley, who’s written several best-selling, award-winning non-fiction books, appeal to most Beltway insiders. But the welcome surprise is that “The Big Secret” (Forge, 302 pages, $24.95),Woodward-payback notwithstanding, is a page-turner of a political mystery novel, one that’s easily consumed during a long afternoon. As such, it’s a much-needed relief from the avalanche of memoirs, screeds, tell-alls, and other hyperpartisan books that have dominated the non-fiction best-seller list for the past year. I’ve read (and reviewed) a slew of these tomes, and it’s not always a pleasant way to spend one’s time. It doesn’t matter which side of the ideological divide the book falls; most of them make for tedious reading. A small sampling: Dick Morris’s “Rewriting History” (knowledgeable but with an almost paranoid anti-Clintons agenda); Richard Clarke’s “Against All Enemies” (sour grapes with an aim to make a buck); Ben Shapiro’s “Brainwashed” (accurate but earnest look at academia); Bill Clinton’s “My Life” (unread); Thomas Frank’s “What’s the Matter With Kansas” (attack on elitism by an elitist); John Dean’s “Worse Than Watergate” (appealing irony factor but mostly hot air); P.J. O’Rourke’s “Peace Kills” (funny, but the same old shtick); and Craig Unger’s “House of Bush, House of Saud” (barely substantiated Bush-bashing that seems reasonable only when compared to “Fahrenheit 9/11”). While Mr. Earley’s skill at writing fiction isn’t close to that of, say,Tom Wolfe — or even Joe Klein — his knowledge of the internecine machinations of Washington in general, and the Washington Post (called “The Washington Tribune” in the book), give the book verisimilitude. And Mr. Earley’s yarn is appealing, combining elements of Southern racism, journalistic malpractice, the buddy system of the U.S. Senate, F.B.I. skullduggery, and a hefty dose of the paranormal. His protagonist, Nick LeRue, works as an investigator for an elderly Texan senator, who regales him with LBJ anecdotes.The hardboiled LeRue takes a detour from his normal duties when he learns that an ex-girlfriend has gone missing in Mississippi while working on an article for the Tribune on a 1955 lynching of a young black man.The girlfriend, Heather, once dumped him for Middleton, but he still pines for her. So when Melanie — her identical twin — contacts LeRue, they set off to find the lost reporter. After several days of sleuthing, LeRue and his duplicitous companion return to Washington, where they are harassed by government officials because they’ve uncovered an embarrassing secret held by a senator. In addition, the pair has dug up dirt on Middleton and the alleged source he used for causing a president to resign a generation ago. LeRue confronts Middleton’s most famous source (“The Wizard” is substituted for “Deep Throat”) as well as the newspaper legend. That sets in motion a rapid series of plot twists and turns that I won’t disclose here. The main flaw in Mr. Earley’s fiction is the preponderance of clichés, an obstacle that’s not insurmountable but does distract from his compelling whodunit. For example, when musing about the reasons for his breakup with Heather Cole, LeRue recalls her bitter recriminations against his lack of ambition, that he’s content to be a “waterboy” instead of a “quarterback.” She says: “Everything really important in America happens in one of only three cities — New York, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C. The rest of this nation is an intellectual and cultural wasteland. ? [H]ere in Washington, it takes more than being rich or having big tits to emerge as a player.Washington is about power — pure unadulterated political power — the kind that absolutely terrifies people because you can reach out and crush them with it.” But “The Big Secret” is still a cut above the popular thrillers of John Grisham and Tom Clancy, and could easily be made into a movie or television miniseries that would be superior to dreck like “The West Wing,” “The Contender,” and any of the Kennedy/Camelot specials that pop up with depressing regularity. One of Mr. Earley’s previous books, “Family of Spies,” became a CBS miniseries, so it’s not entirely inconceivable “The Big Secret” might attract interest in Hollywood. Whether any producer or director would want to call into question Mr. Woodward’s veracity or cast doubt on the existence of “Deep Throat,” however, might be asking too much. It’s a shame Miramax’s Harvey Weinstein isn’t so entirely tethered to the Democratic Party, since a widescreen release of “The Big Secret” could fatten his already considerable bank account. Grudge Report By Patrick Anderson whose e-mail address is mondaythrillers@aol.com Monday, June 14, 2004; Page C02 First-time novelist Pete Earley is a former Washington Post reporter who has written seven books of nonfiction, including "The Hot House: Life Inside Leavenworth Prison"; "Circumstantial Evidence," which won the Robert F. Kennedy Award; and "Family of Spies," which became a CBS miniseries. "The Big Secret," his first attempt at fiction, would be a routine political thriller except that, in presenting one character, Earley launches a rather violent attack on one of America's best-known journalists, The Post's Bob Woodward. Earley's narrator is Nick LeRue, chief investigator for the Senate Judiciary Committee. In the opening scene, at the behest of his boss, a Democrat, he has gathered information that is embarrassing to a Mississippi Republican senator named Nehemiah Peterman. But LeRue's mind is less on politics than on his unhappy love life. His live-in girlfriend of five years, Heather Cole, star reporter for the Washington Tribune, has left him to move into the Georgetown home of America's most celebrated investigative reporter, the Tribune's Andrew Middleton. In parting, Heather made it clear that she intends to be a famous and powerful reporter, that LeRue is a nobody and she's leaving him for a somebody. The lovesick LeRue is thus stunned when a woman he takes to be Heather approaches him one day but proves to be her twin sister, Melanie, who insists that Heather is in Mississippi, where someone is trying to kill her. He is even more bewildered to learn how Melanie gets her information from Heather: It seems that the identical twins can communicate in their dreams. Melanie says Heather has gone to Mississippi because reporter Middleton has given her information that may expose the truth about a 1955 lynching. LeRue is persuaded to accompany Melanie to Mississippi, where Heather does indeed turn up dead. The evidence indicates that she was killed by a racist who took part in the lynching. However, LeRue and Melanie refuse to accept this story and return to Washington to continue their search for the truth. One of their suspects is Sen. Peterman, whose Mississippi home is near where Heather's body was found. Their other suspect is her boyfriend, who is described as "one of the most famous investigative reporters in the nation. In the early 1970s, his reporting led to the resignation of a U.S. president. Since then, Middleton has written a half dozen insider books about Washington." In case we don't get it, we are also told that Middleton has "a dimple in the center of his chin and a nasal tone to his voice." In short, this Middleton is a Bob Woodward clone in just about every detail except having a partner named Bernstein, which we are mercifully spared. LeRue becomes convinced that this celebrated reporter deliberately sent Heather to her death in Mississippi. Middleton is endlessly denounced on a personal and professional level. One character calls him a "ruthless lying lout." We are told that his famous source in the presidential scandal, "the Wizard," did not exist and that Middleton has been, ever since his Army duty, a CIA agent in deep cover. Eventually, he meets the fate that such a villain deserves. But long before that, the long shadow of Bob Woodward has overwhelmed this lightweight novel. What is Earley up to? Is there a grudge involved here? Or did he simply think the Woodward connection might sell books? One hint of Earley's motivations comes when he introduces a character much like himself, a former Tribune reporter who has written a book about spies that became a television miniseries, and who claims that the duplicitous Middleton, out of jealousy, conspired to have him fired from the paper. This inspired me, after finishing "The Big Secret," to check Google, where I found an interview Earley gave recently to the New York Post's Page Six gossip column. In it, he angrily charged that Woodward forced his resignation from The Post in 1986 and declared: "I do deeply resent that Bob Woodward betrayed me and did it in the cruelest possible way." Well, that provides a clef to this roman à clef, but it doesn't make the novel any easier to take. If there is a dark side to Woodward that has escaped public notice for 30-odd years, by all means let Earley or some other reporter reveal it, but as a reporter, in a newspaper or magazine, not by changing Woodward's name and dishing up dirt under the guise of fiction. As a reader, I don't care what may have happened between the two men 18 years ago, but when I pick up a novel I hope to enter the realm of the imagination, and I don't like being constantly distracted by ancient newsroom gossip. Woodward aside, Earley spends far too much time rehashing well-known Washington history, not just Watergate but sex scandals, the Janet Cooke case, the mysterious death of a former CIA director and, in a tour of Georgetown, the never-to-be-forgotten time "one of the wives of former Washington Redskins owner Jack Kent Cooke caused a sensation by leaping onto the hood of a fleeing Jaguar sports car being driven by her much younger male companion during a raucous night out." All this grows awfully tiresome. And I'm not even going to tell you about the time dead twin Heather takes over the body of live twin Melanie and has sex with LeRue from beyond the grave. There is a long and honorable tradition of reporters writing novels. It includes Ernest Hemingway and John O'Hara, and today's Thomas Harris and Michael Connelly. But not every journalist has the turn of mind needed to make the leap to fiction. On the evidence of "The Big Secret," I would say Earley's talents are more suited to the challenges of nonfiction. Page Six By Richard Johnson April 26, 2004 Payback can be painful – as Bob Woodward will learn when "the Big Secret" Forge books, arrives in stores in June. The author, Pete Earley, was hired by Woodward at the Washington Post in 1980, but then was forced to resign in 1986 after the Watergate sleuth "tried to get me fired," he says. Now Earley's first novel features an arrogant, scheming star reporter for the Washington "Tribune" who broke the Watergate case with the help of an inside source – not Deep Throat, but "the Wizard." The fictional journalist, Andrew Middleton, plots to have his girlfriend killed when hse gets too close to his big secret and has another reporter fired, just as Woodward allegedly tried to get Earley canned. "Middleton undermines reporters who are successful, especially those he thinks are threats. He's jealous," the novel says on page 198. The character is also a fraud, as portrayed by Earley, who makes the case that Middleton/Woodward never had a Deep Throat – just leaks from the CIA – and invented the mystery man to hype sales of "All the President's Men," his book about Watergate co-written with Carl Bernstein. Asked if "The Big Secret" was his revenge, Earley told Page Six: "Leaving the Post was a great career move for me. I've made more money and written several best-selling and, I hope, important books. So I'm not bitter. But I do deeply resent that Bob Woodward betrayed me and he did it in the cruelest way possible." "He befriended me first. He flattered me and appealed to my ego. He promised me that our conversations would be off the record, and then he went directly to the people who were involved in our private conversations and told them what had been said. He drove a knife in my back. "What has always struck me as odd is the ease with which he betrayed me...The guy actually put his arm on my shoulder and said we were going to become great friends – and then, within a few hours, he was trying to get me fired. When I confronted him, he called me naive." Woodward went on to write several other best sellers. His latest, "Plan of Attack" tells of ancor in the White House as preparations were made for the liberation of Iraq. "I'm going to send my novel to Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice," Earley said. "I wonder if they will also feel naive." A call to Woodward was not returned. The Big Secret By Steve Weinberg During the 1980s, Pete Earley worked as a Washington Post investigative reporter, having been hired by Bob Woodward. Eventually, Earley and Woodward - probably the most famous, wealthiest investigative journalist in the craft's history - experienced a falling-out. Earley left the Post, angry, even bitter. He made a career of writing investigative books - about a wrongful conviction, about Leavenworth Prison, about espionage against the United States. Each book contains plenty of real-life villains. Now, in his first novel, Earley has invented a fictional villain who bears a striking resemblance to his old nemesis: Bob Woodward. Like many hard-news journalists who make the transition to fiction - think of Edna Buchanan as a case study - Earley shows promise as a plotter but needs seasoning as a stylist. But I do not intend to damn with faint praise. The Big Secret, for all its stylistic imperfections, is exciting, educational and well worth reading. Like the plots of most complex mysteries, Earley's is difficult to summarize, but I'll try: Heather Cole is a well-known Washington, D.C., newspaper journalist, perhaps best compared to the real-life Maureen Dowd. She vanishes after traveling to Mississippi to research a book about the white male perpetrators of a 1955 lynching never officially solved. Heather's identical twin sister, Melanie, intuits from a dream that trouble is brewing. A frantic Melanie contacts Heather's long-time, recently spurned lover, U.S. Senate investigator Nick LaRue. He had no previous knowledge of Melanie's existence, and is understandably skeptical about basing an investigation on a dream. But LaRue quickly gives in, charmed by Melanie, worried about Heather and suspicious of the role played by Andrew Middleton, the Woodward-like character who is Heather's lover. When LaRue and Melanie reach Mississippi, they verify Heather has disappeared and might be dead. As the plot progresses, Middleton appears sleazier and sleazier, as a journalist and as a human being. Another Establishment pillar who becomes a focus of the LaRue-Melanie investigation is a U.S. senator from Mississippi. But, if they are involved in Heather's disappearance, are they controlling the situation or merely pawns? Unlike so many other contemporary mysteries, Earley's storyline, while intricate - even convoluted in spots - ultimately hangs together logically. Readers learn a great deal of information about, among other topics, investigative journalism, U.S. Senate politics, Mississippi's social strata, soul food, racial bigotry, identical twin studies, bipolar personality disorder, creation of false identities, college social clubs, friendship, lust and love. The novel, narrated by LaRue, is mostly devoid of literary allusions and other high learning, but Earley can surprise. At one juncture, while making a point about problem solving, LaRue refers to reading the novel Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham at age 14. "My father, the minister, hated the novel because it described a man's search for meaning in his life and Maugham concluded there really isn't any. We're born, we live, and we die, and that's pretty much it," LaRue says. But, he adds, "There's one particular passage I memorized. It's near the end of the book when the main character finally understands that life is meant to be enjoyed and there is no hidden master plan to it." The passage reads like this: "It was like one of the puzzles which you worry over till you are shown the solution and then cannot imagine how it could ever have escaped you. The answer was obvious." The parallel with Earley's denouement is clear: The reason behind Melanie's disappearance and Middleton's role in it should have been obvious from the beginning, too. Whether readers figure out the puzzle or not, however, most should find this novel's conclusion satisfying - with the possible exception of Bob Woodward, of course. Steve Weinberg is a freelance author and reviewer who collects novels featuring journalists. His collection, numbering several thousand books, resides at the University of Missouri library. |