About the Author
Roy Hoopes is the author of the standard biographies of James M. Cain and Ralph Ingersoll. He lives in Bethesda, Maryland.
Roy Hoopes is a career journalist in Washington, DC, and the author of Cain, the Edgar Award-winning standard biography of James M. Cain. His first novel is an historical detective novel featuring James M. Cain and H. L. Mencken as detectives, two Baltimore journalists investigating the deaths and
sex scandals in 1923 Harding-administration Washington,
DC, in the season before the big Teapot Dome scandal breaks. There is a remarkable relevance of 1920s scandals to todays political environment, but that remains behind the book as two bright literary men playing Holmes and Watson, Mencken and Cain, take the train to DC to get the real scoop. They drink a lot, meet a mysterious sexy redhead named Roxy, a rogue named Gaston B. Means, and get a lot more than they bargained for. They don’t solve a crime, but with hard-boiled enthusiasm they expose some of the roots of the malaise of our capitol. All the speaking roles are real historical characters.