Like Thrills? Try Jake Tapper's Latest.

The Marders are at it again! Except this time, in Jake Tapper’s newest thriller, All The Demons Are Here, the focus isn’t on Charlie and Margaret but on their adult children, Lucy and Ike. Fans of Tapper’s The Hellfire Club and The Devil May Dance, shouldn’t worry though, as All The Demons Are Here still offers a similar history-rich thrill ride and Charlie and Margaret still play a vital role in the plot.

Sounds wild, right? That’s because it is. As historical fiction, much of the book is based on actual events and actual people. Like his other Marder novels, Mr. Tapper does an excellent job priming the canvas with real history as he paints his thrilling tales. For me, it's the way he goes about it that makes the book more fun. It's not at all a clear-cut history lesson. In most cases, Mr. Tapper uses true-to-life historical facts but follows them with “fact-adjacent” histories, created for the sake of his story. Sometimes this might mean creating a Tapper-world character that very closely resembles someone in real life, i.e. Max Lyon as a Rupert Murdoch type, and sometimes this might mean hiding fictionalized history among so many other real historical facts that it becomes difficult for the reader to tell what is true and what is false. Throughout All The Demons Are Here, I found myself pausing to research many “that-can’t-be-true” facts, only to find out that yes, in fact, they were true or at least true to some degree. Consequently, I got sucked down a lot of online rabbit holes of research.

One thing that resonated with me in All The Demons Are Here was the parallels Mr. Tapper draws between 1977 when the book takes place and today’s world. From disgruntled veterans being denied health care by their own government, to irresponsible journalism leading to hysteria and violence, to morally ambiguous, egotistical showmen influencing the masses, it’s as if we’re running in a parallel dimension and makes me wonder if the world has always been like this, an ever bubbling cauldron of unrest that we all choose to forget when we dawn the rose-colored glasses of nostalgia. With the rise of social media, it's easy to feel as if every problem is now right at our doorstep, it's easier to feel like the past was simpler. Mr. Tapper dispels this notion and there’s an odd kind of comfort in that.

There is a solution, however, to all the world’s woes and that solution is Cheers The Governor, a drinking game that Mr. Tapper hilariously describes in one of the Ike’s Montana bar scenes. I had never heard of the game, but I looked it up and it’s real. Essentially, if you have a deck of cards, a few drinks, a few friends, and you understand the fundamentals of basic counting you can play the game just fine. Just understand that, as Mr. Tapper puts it,  “Cheers to the Governor has no natural conclusion; you keep adding rules and playing until everyone wanders off or dies of alcohol poisoning.”

All The Demons Are Here is a fun, fast-paced thriller and a perfect “next chapter” as we follow the Marder family through the decades. History buffs and thriller junkies alike will love it. I’m already excited to see where the next novel will lead, as Mr. Tapper has divulged that the story will take place in 1984, which is the year of my birth, though I doubt that holds enough historical significance to make it into the storyline. As a final note, you do not need to have read the first two installments, The Hellfire Club and The Devil May Dance, in order to enjoy All The Demons Are Here, but while you’re at it, you might as well get all three. 

Brett Allen is a humor writer and author of the Afghanistan war novel, Kilroy Was Here. His latest novel is called Sly Fox Hollow. Follow him on Twitter at @hogwashwriting.