Review - The Rumor Game by Thomas Mullen @Mullenwrites

MY REVIEW

I don’t read a lot of historical fiction that deals with war and politics and more, but every once in a while one slips in, such as The Rumor Game by Thomas Mullen. There were elements about the story that struck me personally and it helped me to see the possibilities.

I loved Anne Lemire, because she does not back down. She puts herself front and center, digging and investigating, making herself a target. She writes for The Rumor Clinic, disproving harmful rumors. I thought for sure she was going to get her or someone close to her killed.

FBI Special Agent Devon Mulvey,….caught between a rock and a hard place. His job is to find those working against the government and sabotaging the war effort. I tried not to be judgmental, but….and I didn’t see the choice he would make, but I saw the reason why he made it.

I had to keep telling myself that this is 1943. Things were different then, yet current events prove that history repeats itself, over and over again. I find it puzzling, how those who were treated so badly when they immigrated to the United States could turn around and do the same thing to others. Why are they not more empathetic, seeing they can relate?

Everything felt so real. Whether it’s the Irish chasing and beating Jews or underground organizations printing hat sheet pamphlets inflaming the populace against those different from them and against the war in general, ration stamps, chauvinism, sexism, the union meetings, discrimination and threats in the factories, the USO dances, even religious leaders contributed to the discontent, police corruption, custodial detention, fascism, communism, murder…

….entrenched economic system forced people into roles….Negroes are lazy. Irish are drunks. Italians are criminals. Jews are bloodsuckers.

I found The Rumor Game by Thomas Mullen very disturbing…because it felt so real and made me think….too much…making my brain hurt, or at least giving me a headache. AND…that is why I don’t read a lot of historical fictional war and politics stories.

Animated Animals. Pictures, Images and Photos — 4 Stars

GOODREADS BLURB

A determined reporter and a reluctant FBI agent face off against fascist elements in World War II-era Boston.

June, 1943. Wartime tensions are running high, and an atmosphere of distrust and unease is dividing friends and neighbors. The two protagonists of Thomas Mullen’s gripping historical thriller find themselves at the center of a dangerous tinderbox, trying to douse the sparks before flames engulf the city.

Reporter Anne Lemire writes the Rumor Clinic, a newspaper column that disproves the many harmful rumors floating around town, some of them spread by Axis actors and others just gossip mixed with fear and ignorance. She’s getting tired of chasing rumors about Rosie Riveters’ safety on the job, or whether the Nazis have poisoned lobsters off the coast of Maine. She wants to write about something bigger.

Special Agent Devon Mulvey, one of the few Catholics at the FBI, spends his weekdays preventing sabotage in the war industries and his Sundays spying on clerics with divided loyalties—and he spends his evenings wooing the many lonely women whose husbands are off at war.

When Anne’s story about Nazi propaganda being handed out by local businesses intersects with Devon’s investigation into the death of an immigrant factory worker, the two are led down a dangerous trail of espionage, organized crime, and domestic fascism—one that implicates their own tangled pasts and threatens to expose a larger pattern of conspiracy than either of them could have imagined.

With incredible attention to detail, vibrant historical atmosphere, and a riveting mystery that illuminates still-timely issues about disinformation, power, and influence in a society plagued by division, Thomas Mullen delivers another powerful thriller.

Genre: Espionage, Fictiion, Hisstorical Fiction, Mystery, Suspense, Thriller,
368 pages, Kindle Edition
Expected publication February 27, 2024 by Minotaur

ABOUT THOMAS MULLEN

Thomas Mullen is the author of Darktown, an NPR Best Book of the Year, which has been shortlisted for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the Southern Book Prize, the Indies Choice Book Award, has been nominated for two Crime Writers Assocation Dagger Awards, and is being developed for television by Sony Pictures with executive producer Jamie Foxx; The Last Town on Earth, which was named Best Debut Novel of 2006 by USA Today and was awarded the James Fenimore Cooper Prize for excellence in historical fiction; The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers; and The Revisionists. He lives in Atlanta with his wife and sons.

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