David H. Rothman, author of The Solomon Scandals and Drone Child, didn't just research and imagine Scandals. He lived much of it.

In the 1970s, Rothman helped expose corruption in the federal office leasing program. His reporting triggered a congressional investigation and made the NBC and ABC evening newscasts.

A great-grandfather was a Jewish tax collector for the Tsar. In a brush with authoritarianism closer to home, Rothman once ended up in the juvenile detention room of an Ohio police station for asking the wrong questions about Nixon, Billy Graham, and Vietnam at a news conference.

As a writer, he is drawn to dark themes, satire, and heroes who fight back, like Jon Stone, the protagonist of Scandals. Set in 1970s Washington, the novel follows Stone into a murky overlap of journalism, real estate, politics, and intelligence.

Rothman is also the author of Drone Child, a thriller about a genius child soldier and drone hacker who, from his vantage point as a mid-21st-century drone magnate, looks back while writing his memoir. The brilliant Lemba ruminates on war, family, technology, ambition, love of parents and a sister, and resistance to powerful and bizarre bullies. Wars in places like Congo and Ukraine have only made parts of the novel feel less speculative. Rothman wrote the book with guidance from Congolese political activist Jean Félix Mwema Ngandu and Junior Boweya, a techie-businessman in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Rothman grew up in Alexandria, Virginia, across the Potomac from Washington, graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and worked for the Lorain Journal in the Cleveland area, where he covered the aftermath of the Kent State shootings. He lives just inside the notorious Capital Beltway.