The third installment of CNN anchor Jake Tapper’s bestselling historical thriller series kicks off with infamous motorcycle stuntman Evel Knievel about to jump over a tank of sharks in Chicago. By the end of All the Demons Are Here (Little, Brown), he’s a savvy politician with aspirations of becoming the U.S. President. Not all of this is made up.
That blurry line between fact and fiction — and finding the parallels between the past and the here and now — is one of the reasons Tapper’s books have found solid footing in a crowded genre marked by literary giants.
For those new to Tapper’s books, a quick recap. Starting with his 2018 debut, The Hellfire Club, Tapper’s novels follow the adventures of World War II vet and Congressman, Charlie Marder. He and his soon-to-be wife, Margaret dance with the Kennedy’s and Nixons amid a tangle of secret societies in the 50s, and rub shoulders with The Rat Pack in Hollywood in the 60s. In All the Demons Are Here, we head to the 70s with Charlie and Margaret’s grown-up kids — Ike and Lucy — as they navigate a post-Watergate America.
“This is the first I’ve written about a year that I lived through,” Tapper says. “I was born in 1969 and my memories of the 70s, limited as they were, were not particularly great when it came to the culture. I remember gas lines and Elvis dying. It didn’t seem enough…”
He’d assumed wrong.
“In some instances, I didn’t know about things because my parents were hiding it from me, such as the Son of Sam serial killer who was a few miles up the highway in New York City,” he says. “Also the New York City blackout and the prominence of Evel Knievel, and the disillusionment the American people felt after Vietnam and after Watergate, and the rise of tabloid journalism.”
Not all of it makes it into All the Demons Are Here — but most of it does. Evel Knievel, for example, plays a critical role.
“There’s something quintessentially American about the Evel Knievel character,” he says. “And obviously, when I studied him, I saw some DNA of his in Donald Trump, not necessarily in a pejorative way, but about his ability to be a salesman, to be a showman, to shoot from the hip and say offensive things, but get away with them and capture the imagination of parts of the public, and get lots of media attention.
“No, Evel Knievel didn’t have any serious political aspirations, although in the book I have him run for president as something of a stunt. But if you Google it, you can find ‘Evel Knievel for President’ buttons that were made in the early 70s as a lark.”
In reality, Tapper says the stuntman may have had a real shot at the presidency in today’s political climate. It’s this kind of parallel that enhances the resonance of Tapper’s stories. He makes a point to weave in not only characters of the past but also the major events and societal beliefs that marked the time period. His task is then to make it relevant today.
“I embrace the year almost as if it is a character throwing things at the protagonists,” he says.
The characters dodging these proverbial bullets in All the Demons Are Here are Ike and Lucy. While Marder and his wife still appear in the book, Tapper felt it important their children tell this story since the characters live and age in real-time.
Ike and Lucy are more naïve than their parents, which Tapper says made it easier for them to make “bad” decisions. Ike is an AWOL marine, now working for Evel Knievel on his pit crew in Butte, Montana.
“I thought Ike would be a great character to capture the disillusionment that so many Americans felt then about their government, and feel now about their government, both in terms of how it treats its veterans and in terms of the glibness with which our government and its politicians send service members into harm’s way.”
Perhaps the easier character to write, however, was that of Lucy, an idealistic young reporter who wants to become the next Bob Woodward or Carl Bernstein. It’s a road rife with obstacles. Eventually, Lucy goes to work for a tabloid where she researches and starts covering the case of a serial killer.
“The tabloid is very eager to replicate the success the New York Post is having up north with the Son of Sam murders,” Tapper says. “So Lucy has her journalism and her ethics really tested by these unethical bosses.”
It’s obvious he aims to make bold statements in his work, but he admits, there’s also serious fun to be had when he sits down — usually at his kitchen table with his family milling around — to write.
“I don’t know who said it, but history doesn’t repeat itself — it rhymes,” he says. “And whether it’s Joe McCarthy in the 50s or Frank Sinatra in the 60s or Evel Knievel in the 70s, there’s a lot of rhyming, and it’s fun to play with. It’s reassuring in a way to think that the U.S. has been through similar circumstances before and emerged at the other end of the tunnel. But it’s also just fun to play with all this as a writer.”
Keeping to structure, Tapper plans to take his literary playground to the 80s for his next book. It takes place in 1984 and will feature Lucy, now in her late twenties. It’s the 40th anniversary of D-Day and to celebrate her father’s part in the D-Day invasion, she is with him on a cruise, along with a number of WWII heroes. But the day after the yacht sets sail, one of the top generals from WWII disappears.
“The 80s is less of a character than the 70s because we’re kind of in a confined space out at sea,” Tapper says. “So there aren’t jazzercise classes going on or anything — though maybe I should consider that. This book is a little bit more about WWII and a little bit more about how the United States sees itself in the world.”
About Jake Tapper:
Jake Tapper is the chief DC anchor and chief Washington correspondent for CNN; he hosts the weekday show The Lead with Jake Tapper and cohosts the Sunday public affairs show State of the Union. A Dartmouth graduate and Philly native, he lives in Washington, DC, with his wife, daughter, and son.
