Historical Thriller Review: The Rumor Game | Thomas Mullen

If you’ve never read Thomas Mullen before, I consider him best known for his historical mysteries with strong themes of prejudice, racism, hatred, corruption, and violence. His latest historical thriller, The Rumor Game, is set in Boston, Massachusetts during World War II and centers around a newspaper reporter and an FBI agent whose work intersects leading to dangerous consequences.

About the Book | The Rumor Game

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 spies and others just gossip mixed with fear and ignorance. Tired of chasing silly rumors about Rosie Riveters’ safety on the job, she wants to write about something bigger.

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

When Anne’s story about Nazi propaganda intersects with Devon’s investigation into the death of a 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 engulf the city in violence.

With vibrant historical atmosphere and a riveting mystery that illuminates still-timely issues about disinformation and power, Thomas Mullen delivers another powerful thriller.

Review | The Rumor Game

A well-paced story that instantly transports the reader to Boston in 1942, Mullen quickly and effectively builds the sociopolitical context for the mystery. The US has joined WWII after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Boston in the early 1940s is filled with anti-Jewish sentiment across the different communities. Tensions among different groups have escalated from unrest to fascism, brutality, violence, and targeted attacks.

Journalist Anne Lemire writes a newspaper column called the Rumor Clinic that debunks false information and rumors spreading around the city. Many of these stories gain traction quickly and lead to dangerous consequences when the information is untrue. One of the stories she is working on revolves around allegations that a doctor at Fort Gillem in Georgia is performing illegal abortions on women in the WAAC (non-combat roles in the army) impregnated by soldiers. Anne rapidly debunks allegations from sources and gathers the information she needs to correct the damaging story. Anne’s Jewish background and her political leanings prompt her to pursue a story about local gangs targeting Jewish kids.

“There were many different kinds of mistruths […] Some mistruths were born of ignorance, almost innocent in their lack of understanding about the world. Some were initially harmless, more mistakes than outright lies, until they were repeated often enough to convince a critical mass of people […]  Then there were the deliberate mistruths […] Some lies were well-camouflaged, particularly hard to ferret out, while others were so obvious that only a fool would willingly reach out and touch it.”

Meanwhile Devon Mulvey is an FBI agent who engages in…extramarital activities with married women. Almost exclusively married women, and not because he targets them but because most women happen to be married after the rush of proposals before soldiers were shipped out to war. In the same way that Anne’s Jewish heritage make her an outsider in many parts of the city, Devon’s Irish-Catholic background make him an outsider within the FBI ranks. Furthermore, it leads to problems within his community because he feels guilt investigating his own people.

When Devon is called to investigate the murder of a Jewish refugee whose body was found with a swastika drawn on a cocktail napkin, he finds himself at odds with the Boston Police Department. Meanwhile Anne’s brother Sammy is attacked by an Irish gang, leading her to pursue deeper investigations into antisemitism. When Anne and Devon’s paths cross, they find themselves with a common cause in their investigations into the Christian Legion.

This is a politically charged novel which can make it heavy to read. A quick pace and interesting leading characters pull the reader into the story. The partnership (if you can call it that) between Anne and Devon is rocky. Their backgrounds prevent them from really trusting one another, despite a romantic connection between the two that seems ill-fated.

A compulsive historical thriller with a strong emphasis on prejudice and political unrest.

Thank you to Minotaur Books for my copy. Opinions are my own.

About the Author | 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.