Like some Mount Rushmore of the mind, American presidents loom large for best-selling author Brad Meltzer: Live, dead and imaginary presidents are among the prime movers in his creative landscape. More than half his novels have the nation’s capital as their main setting, the Freemasons (a secretive fraternity whose real-life members have included commanders-in-chief George Washington and Harry Truman) show up repeatedly and presidential assassins take on lives of their own.
In addition to writing popular novels such as “The Tenth Justice,” “The Book of Lies” and his latest, “The Inner Circle,” he writes comic books including “Justice League of America” and “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.” In December, the TV series “Brad Meltzer’s Decoded”—pretty much “History Detectives” meets “The Da Vinci Code”—premiered on the History Channel. His website, www.bradmeltzer.com, includes videos that star “Buffy” creator Joss Whedon, or an entire retirement community quoting bad book reviews or (best of all) children making bleep-worthy comments about finding Meltzer books in their Happy Meals.
Meltzer mentioned in a recent pre-tour interview that his new novel marks a return to Washington as a setting after an “absence” of several years. “The Inner Circle” details what befalls National Archives researcher Beecher White after his first girlfriend resurfaces and he gives her an off-the-record tour of a vaultlike presidential reading room. The appearance during their illicit visit of something mysterious that might have belonged to George Washington but also might have been intended only for the eyes of President Orson Wallace sets Beecher and his friends on a collision course with the most powerful person in the world.
AJC: For some research on this book, you were relying on former U.S. presidents, right?
Brad Meltzer: Years ago, I got a call from the Department of Homeland Security [which] asked me to come in and brainstorm different ways terrorists will attack the United States. What I was struck by was that they were calling on regular civilians. I looked at the history and realized that [practice] started with George Washington, who—during the Revolutionary War—was so sick of having the British intercept [his communiqués] that ... he formed the first secret [U.S.] spy ring, the Culper Ring.
I was talking to one of the guys from Homeland Security ... and saying, “Help me figure out how the Culper Ring, if it was still in existence today ... would work.” He said, “What makes you think it’s [not still] around?” And former president [George H.W.] Bush was helpful to me [after] I asked him, “How hard is it to keep a secret in the White House?”
[Presidents want] someone they trust. Every [president] brings someone ... from home, from their hometown, whether it was [adviser to President Bill Clinton] Bruce Lindsey or [George W. Bush adviser] Karl Rove.
AJC: There’s a sense of respect for books in “The Inner Circle,” and in your career overall, but you’ve also embraced the potential of the Internet with what’s on your website.
Meltzer: I love the smell of a book, I love how a book feels. But I can’t be one of those people ... who [believe], “All I need is the printed page.” ... We’re a society that has more access to information than any society before us, but I think ... we [also] have more access to noise than any society before us. [Do an Internet search for] “secret tunnel below the White House” ... and watch what comes up.
AJC: Where did Beecher White come from?
Meltzer: This started because my ... third-grade girlfriend finally got in touch [through] Facebook. I was amazed at how [it] made me stop everything I was doing to [experience] that flood of memories that ... comes ... when you see an old friend [after] 20 years. ... I feel like we are all, thanks to Facebook, exploring our pasts in ways that we haven’t in so long. And as I was doing that ... I was in the Archives ... exploring the past.
I [imagined] this character ... so obsessed with his past he can’t even see his future, and Beecher was born.
Event preview
Brad Meltzer. 7 p.m. Jan. 19. $10. Margaret Mitchell House, 990 Peachtree St., Atlanta. 404-814-4150, www.margaretmitchellhouse.com.
About the Author
