The Last Pumpkin Paper

By Bob Oeste

The long-forgotten Alger Hiss case provides the key to a 50-year-old conspiracy of blackmail, espionage and assassination on both sides of the crumbling Iron Curtain. Joe Pope, a congressional investigator back in '48, is trying to enjoy his retirement in Key West when his ex-boss convinces him that there's a piece of incriminating microfilm in existence that could "rewrite the history of the 20th century."

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0679448373
• ISBN13: 9780679448372
• Release Date: March 1996
• Publisher: Random House
• Length: 267 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.5" x 1.3" x 5.8"

Customer Reviews

Wickedly entertaining political/historical/conspiracy/satire

Bob Oeste's tour de force of a novel takes the reader from the early days of McCarthyism and the Alger Hiss case to the near-present (1989) and Berlin just before the Wall fell. The story focuses on former HUAC (House Un-American Committee) investigator Joe Pope and his former boss, Richard Nixon, who calls Pope up with one last job to do. Apparently, there's one last roll of microfilm hidden on the farm of Whittaker Chambers, Hiss's chief accuser. So Pope sets off with a few of his buddies to find a document which could "rewrite the history of the 20th century." Oeste brilliantly interweaves the present-day chase with the earlier tale of Pope's days with the Hiss investigation, where the HUAC investigators are "cutting a few corners" (to put it mildly.) Along the way, we meet Nixon, Hiss, the leader of East Germany, and a host of other suspicious and shady characters. If you like spy stories, comic thrillers, historical fiction, or political satire! , you'll like this story. If you like all of the above, you're in for a real treat. I can't wait for Oeste's second book.