THE 10 MOST IMPORTANT BOOKS BY INVESTIGATIVE REPORTERS

NOTE: This list has been culled from lists (and comments in some places) created by Nate Blakeslee and Jason Leopold, along with some doctoring to include my own preferences. Read and enjoy. Read and criticize. But read and pray that in today’s hard-scrabble and lightning-quick world of big money and ugly politics the lonely and determined investigative reporter will continue to work against those impenetrable odds we authors so admire.

ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein

By doggedly exposing President Nixon’s role in Watergate the authors dramatically changed American politics—and we’re still paying the price.

SILENT SPRING by Rachel Carson

Serialized in the New Yorker, the book was finally published in 1962. It is credited with helping launch the contemporary environmental movement in America.

BARBARIANS AT THE GATE: The Fall of RJR Nabisco by John Helyar and Brian Burrough

The book is based upon a series of articles written by the authors for The Wall Street Journal. The title pretty much says it all.

UNSAFE AT ANY SPEED by Ralph Nader

This 1965 book detailed resistance by car manufacturers to the introduction of safety features, like seat belts, and their general reluctance to spend money on improving safety. It made Nader a household name.

THE AMERICAN WAY OF DEATH by Jessica Mitford

An exposé of abuses in the funeral home industry by documenting the ways in which funeral directors take advantage of the shock and grief of friends and relatives of loved ones.

THE JUNGLE by Upton Sinclair

This groundbreaking investigative work into Chicago's meat packing industry resulted in the creation of the Food and Drug Administration"

THE JOURNALIST AND THE MURDERER by Janet Malcolm

The journalist in question is the author Joe McGinniss; the murderer is the former Special Forces Captain Jeffrey MacDonald, who became the subject of McGinniss' 1983 book Fatal Vision. When Malcolm's work first appeared in March 1989, as a two-part serialization in The New Yorker, it caused a sensation, becoming the occasion for wide-ranging debate within the news industry.^[2]

THE HEAT IS ON by Ross Gelbspan

Considered  by many the Holy Grail of the Environment. American writer and activist Gelbspan maintains the website heatisonline.org which he updates on a daily basis.

THE HISTORY OF THE STANDARD OIL COMPANY by Ida Tarbell

One of the original and leading "muckrakers" of the progressive era, Tarbell began this landmark work after her editors at McClure's Magazine called for a story on one of the trusts.

THE SHAME OF THE CITIES by Lincoln Steffans

Ida Tarbell’s editor at McClure's. He became famous for investigating corruption in municipal government in American cities and for his early support for the Soviet Union.

THE YELLOW CAR

Just saw MIDNIGHT IN PARIS for the third time and couldn’t help marveling at the ingenuity of Woody Allen in keeping things simple while bringing us face-to-face with that whole magilla of authors and artist expatriates from the 1920s.

             

             It’s midnight in the Paris of today. An aspiring author played by Owen Wilson sees a mysterious yellow car approaching from out of the mist. Filled with rowdies looking for a good time, the car stops in front of him.  He decides to get in. It takes him to a Parisian bar and he goes inside.  

              

             WHAMMO—suddenly Wilson is drinking and rubbing elbows with Hemingway and Fitzgerald, Zelda, Alice B. Toklas, Gertrude Stein, and cozying up to the mistress of Picasso. Later he meets Salvadore Dali, Bunuel, Man Ray, T.S. Elliot.

             

             While we struggle with magical devices like time machines and space ships and complicated portals and flashbacks and flash forwards, Woody Allen chose the everyday simplicity of a car to move us backward almost a century in time. Sure it was exotic—that strikingly yellow 1925 Peugeot Type 176 sedan.

              

             But that yellow car got us to where Woody Allen wanted us to go. No long, perilous journey through space. No feeling we didn’t belong. Just as natural as stepping into a hybrid for a trip to the office or the Mall.  Absolutely brilliant.

WELCOME BACK, KATE CONWAY

My favorite female protagonist is back in action. Flame-haired investigative reporter Kate Conway returns in THE DEADLY BUDDHA. And my readers have fallen for her, head over Kindles.   

“Talk about new age heroines,” wrote one reviewer. “Kate is a natural blend of intellect, power, determination and, by the way, beauty and a real healthy sexuality. She represents the young women of today who are different, bright, well-educated and focused on following their dream, which isn't having babies, playing bridge with the girls and joining the right country club. I want to see more of Kate Conway as Mr. Ong develops her character and her next adventure.”

In THE DEADLY BUDDHA Kate gets trapped into writing the life-story of an Oscar-winning Welsh heart-throb. As much as she hates the Hollywood scene, she can’t avoid falling in love with the guy—despite discovering the ghastly truth about his conniving mother and her diabolical lover in their search for The Golden Buddha of Anyang.

This second volume in the Kate Conway trilogy features museums filled with intrigue, swimming pools filled with temptation, a Welsh city filled with witnesses that keep disappearing, helicopter rides that discharge passengers prematurely—and a 16-year-old Chinese charmer named Zookie, whose sensual body holds the secret of where the billion-dollar Buddha is buried.

But above all THE DEADLY BUDDHA features a female protagonist who makes her readers sit up and take notice while making her author proud—proud of having created a character that is right for the times.

THE DEADLY BUDDHA--Kate Conway Thriller No. 2 is available now on Amazon

Trapped into writing the life-story of an Oscar-winning Welsh heart-throb, investigative reporter Kate Conway can’t avoid falling in love with the guy—despite discovering the ghastly truth about his conniving mother and her diabolical lover in their quest for The Golden Buddha of Anyang.

Will Kate and her father unearth the final piece of evidence before the Malibu wedding?

THE DEADLY BUDDHA has museums filled with intrigue, swimming pools filled with temptation, a Welsh city filled with disappearing witnesses, crazed helicopter rides—and a 16-year-old Chinese charmer named Zookie, whose sensual body hides the secret of where the billion-dollar Buddha is buried.

CALL A MEETING

When my first novel started to drag I decided to call a meeting. Things were bogged down and I wasn’t sure why. So I sat the major characters down at an imaginary table and asked them what I should do to kick start The Lion and the Eagle, my novel about the Revolutionary War.

The villain was the loudest. Colonel Shrewsbury wanted more page time. He was madly in love with the heroine and wanted a longer love scene. He also wanted me to spend more time in portraying his good side—the love he held for his scullery maid mother banished from the Royal Castle following the episode in the broom closet with the King.

The hero was nice about it. Oliver Morrison  told me he wanted to grow up much faster so we could see and feel more of his hatred for Shrewsbury for killing his mother at the church picnic when he was seven.  He wanted to make sure Emily, the heroine, was at the picnic so she’d be a witness to the cross he carried (literally) after his mother’s death.

Emily was the boldest. She said if she was conflicted by her love of two men she wanted to come out of it with flying colors. She wanted a visible reminder of her rejection of Shrewsbury just before the story’s violent end. When she gallantly suggested he carve his initials in her left breast, how could I refuse?   

We all get stuck now and then.  And we all have our special ways of digging out. Whether it was brilliant or naïve, it worked back then and it still works today.

A Novel About The Korean War?

I was working on my sixth novel and had just finished a single chapter detailing the major character’s being sent to Korea while serving in the U.S. Army. I did this with the full realization of what a friend had told me some years earlier.

He had written a whole novel about the war and had landed an agent who was having a hard time finding a publisher. Finally my friend got his first real clue as to the problem when his manuscript came back for the last time. Atop the submission letter written by his agent were just three words signed cryptically by the latest publisher to reject it.

"Sorry, wrong war."

Huh?  All I could think about was Richard Condon’s THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE, James Michener’s THE BRIDGES OF TOKO-RI, and, more recently, James Brady’s THE BOYS OF AUGUST.

But I was forced to realize that publishers can have prejudices even when it comes to wars and that unpublished novelists have no choice but to pay attention—at least until either we gain the clout that comes with being published or the ability to be cunningly brilliant. 

Kate Walbert in THE GARDENS OF KYOTO deftly weaves a spell about a romance that takes place in the mid-1950s while citing a single but graphic incident during the war in Korea. Her writing and the mood it creates is absolutely intoxicating. I keep the novel handy for inspiration.

And I’m keeping alive my own major character’s experience during the Korean War. All I did was add the scene where his best friend was riddled by enemy machine gun bullets and died in his arms.