Barbara Meade

A new biography of Roald Dahl, The Irregulars, highlights the wartime years he spent in Washington and provides a wonderfully colorful accounting of an otherwise checkered life. Recruited by the famous Canadian spymaster William Stephenson, whose code name was “Intrepid,” Roald Dahl charmed and seduced a flock of rich, beautiful, and powerful young Washington figures. His targets included Clare Booth Luce and Standard Oil heiress Millicent Rogers, who also had an affair with Ian Fleming. Part of Roald Dahl's spying mission was to report such pillow talk and to manufacture useful rumors. Beyond the bedrooms, Dahl was a frequent guest of Eleanor Roosevelt at both Hyde Park and the White House, and at Evelyn Walsh McLean's dinner parties at her mansion, Friendship. Dahl faithfully relayed political and diplomatic gossip to his superiors, who included Isaiah Berlin. Through these espionage operations, the British Security intelligence network succeeded in securing America's support in the war effort. Jennet Conant has done all her homework. While noting that spies are "notoriously unreliable narrators,” she has, nevertheless, had access to a treasure trove of papers. As did her previous books about Alfred Loomis (Tuxedo Park) and Robert Oppenheimer (109 East Palace), The Irregulars showcases her research and writing skills.

Leonard Downie, Jr., the former executive editor of the Washington Post, read at P&P from his new Washington thriller, The Rules of the Game, his first venture into the world of fiction. I had many dog-eared pages to ask Len Downie about. The most obvious question was whether his female vice-president, who becomes president, was modeled after Sarah Palin. No, the character was conceived some five years ago, but Downie humorously brushed aside a suggestion that his predictions for the future were remarkably accurate. A customer asked whether the main character, a female investigative reporter who receives constant 4 a.m. phone calls from an anonymous source, was modeled on anyone, and Downie revealed that actually it was he who had been frequently awakened in the early hours of the morning, and warned about terrible consequences if the Post continued its coverage, when the Post was investigating Oliver North's role in Iran-Contra! Aside from these juicy tidbits about the rearrangement of the real world into fiction, Downie's The Rules of the Game is a great page-turner with an attendant higher purpose: the ethical conundrums of politics and journalism as they are both played out in Washington.

“Valentine's Day” is the name of a chapter about a Chicago mob trial in a tremendously entertaining paperback, RULE 53: Capturing Hippies, Spies, Politicians, and Murderers in an American Courtroom. The author, Andy Austin, is a Chicago artist who sketches trial participants for the media because Rule 53 prohibits cameras in courtrooms. She's very, very funny in recounting the preening Chicago mobsters on trial for a long list of charges, from tax fraud to racketeering to murder. Austin began her career in 1969 when she was hired by ABC to cover the conspiracy trial of the Chicago 7; the defendants included Abbie Hoffman, Tom Hayden, and Bobby Seale. From the beginning, in this courtroom circus Andy displayed a talent not only for sketching but also for reporting the daily tumult. She has a special gift for describing the proceedings as simultaneously shocking and funny, outrageous and worthy of sympathy. "The stories I heard as I drew fascinated and educated me,” she writes. “I learned that the courthouse is the grand bazaar of American life."