Book reviews: Tapper’s All the Demons are Here…
All the Demons are Here. Jake Tapper, author (2023). It seems that everyone wants to write a novel now. Actually not—most people don’t have the endurance to run that literary marathon—but Mr. Tapper has written three. I read a previous one, The Hellfire Club (I can’t remember if I wrote a review of it because I’m not that motivated to help out Big Five publishing conglomerates), and this one is a mixed bag in comparison.
The historical setting might interest a lot of people of my generation. (As an observer of society in general and a political observer in particular, necessary for my own writing, post-Nixon, pre-Reagan years represent the times many of us came of age like Ike, one of the protagonists—the other is his younger sister Lucy.
However, you might get the feeling that “Hey, I don’t remember that happening!” or “I never heard that song!” or whatever, and more often than not you’d be justified. Check the end notes. Tapper made up a lot of stuff and admits it, and that all became annoying to me. (This includes stuff about Evel Knieval and Elvis Presley.) Join me in feeling a bit swindled.
Those examples are minor criticisms, though, compared to the feeling that it’s hard to know where Jake is going with the plot. It alternates between Ike and Lucy from chapter to chapter, their two stories written in the first person. Do they come together? Beyond certain limitations (mostly with point of view), there’s nothing much wrong with this ping-pong match between main characters. I used it myself a while ago in A Time Traveler’s Guide through the Multiverse. (It’s a sci-fi rom-com, so the two protagonists are intimately involved from the start—Mr. Tapper’s never really are.) But Ike’s story revolves around the drunk, show-boating Evel; and Lucy’s around sleazy Max Lyons and his family, a fictional caricature of the Murdoch family. You wait and wait for the two stories to come together. It takes fourteen chapters to even get to where something interesting occurs that brings the siblings’ stories together and make the plot worthwhile. Maybe you should just read this novel for its chapters fifteen to eighteen? Of course, that all occurred on a dark and stormy night!
The reference to Agatha Christie is almost blasphemy, by the way. This is no mystery tale. Is it a historical thriller? Maybe. Is it a political thriller? Perhaps. Or maybe a manual on how to ride a motorcycle? Whatever it is, it’s not a mystery. It’s more an anthem celebrating how honest journalism always wins, as it should, considering it’s Jake Tapper writing!
I’m not sure it’s a thriller either. The book is advertised that way, and the endorsements (Connelly? Coben? Really?) express this, but its thrills are few and far between and mostly in those last three chapters.
I don’t know how to classify this novel, but I have little to recommend it, even if you think Mr. Tapper is the best political reporter on TV now. (He is.)
Note to Jake: I generally don’t purchase Big Five books. This one was a gift.
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A Time Traveler’s Guide through the Multiverse. There are a lot of historical events, politics, and comments of human societies, past and present, in this sci-fi rom-com that unlike many time-travel stories does time travel right, by jumping through the multiverse among different possible states of the universe we inhabit. It gives a new meaning of “lost in space-time” to “lost in space,” and the protagonists, physicist Gail and her tech Jeff, have many adventures along the way as their relationship matures. You’ll either hate me or love me for my comments on our past, present, and future as you read about their travels. Available wherever quality ebooks are sold.
Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!
