The Rumor Game
Thomas Mullen
Minotaur Pub
Feb 27th, 2024
The Rumor Game by Thomas Mullen details the US home front political climate during World War II. Set in Boston, it discusses how the unions were involved with Communism and there was Antisemitism that included the Boston police.
“I always wanted to set something in Boston, and in the home front during WWII. In the early part of the War there was some support for the Nazis. The isolationists in the US were concerned that America was supporting the wrong side. I wanted to dramatize what was going on, including the violence and Antisemitism in Boston.”
The heroin is Annie Lemire, a writer for “The Rumor Clinic,” which debunks the many harmful rumors floating around town. Most are just gossip mixed with fear and ignorance. Annie is tired of chasing rumors and wants to tackle something bigger. Then she begins looking into attacks on Jews by Irish toughs who believe America was manipulated into the war.
“I wrote Anne as a very idealistic hard working young reporter. Before Pearl Harbor she was an anti-Fascist activist. She wanted to educate Americans about the dangers of fascism. Instead of writing political leaflets she now has a job at a newspaper to disprove harmful war rumors. I based this part of Anne’s character on a real reporter, Frances Sweeney, an Irish American writer who dedicated her life to exposing Fascists both before and during the war, writing a column for the Boston Herald. Both are fighters against misinformation.”
The story dealing with anti-Semitism is very relevant to the current situation of October 7th. Although applied to the Nazi sympathizers it can easily be applied to the Hamas sympathizers.
Anne thinks how “there were many 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, in which case they became dangerous. Then there were the deliberate mistruths that all but dripped with venom…”
The male hero is Special Agent Devon Mulvey, one of the few Irish Catholics with the FBI. He must navigate internal prejudice which hampers his investigation into the murder of a Jewish man who worked at a munitions plant. He is also trying to prevent an industrial munitions threat as Mulvey struggles to unravel a mystery that includes a murder and the theft of military rifles from a Boston munitions plant.
“Devon thinks he is doing the right thing but has a lot of flaws. He is sleeping around with married women, those whose husbands are off fighting in the war. He justifies this by claiming that the women rushed into the marriage because the men were going to be shipped off to war. Sometimes these hurried marriages worked out perfectly like my grandparents and sometimes they did not last after WWII. The divorce rate skyrocketed after WWII.”
Many Catholics had a hard time climbing the ladder in Boston, while others took out their prejudices against others. “Devon is also an Irish Catholic FBI Agent. At that time there were not many, and he was one of the first, but was looked down upon by the White Anglo Saxon FBI Agents, a very waspy organization. He feels discriminated against. Although many Boston police were Irish Catholic, they look down upon him and consider him a traitor for joining this WASP organization. They called him a hoper, somebody who goes to bed Irish and hopes he wakes up English. He is caught in the middle.”
There were those in America who felt the greater danger was Communism. Mullen exposes this in the story. “His father is an isolationist who thinks the war is a bad idea. He is very traditional Catholic and is very Antisemitic. He feels the biggest threat to America is Communism which is often linked to Judaism. There were people who thought that if Communism is the number one enemy, then maybe Hitler should be their ally because he is fighting the Russians. The more readers get to know the father the less they trust him.”
This complex plot includes fraud, political corruption, police corruption, American fascism, and sedition.
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