Several cable newsmen have written books.

Usually, the cable newsman gets top billing on the book while a lesser-known person is given a lower spot in a smaller point size as a co-author on the cover. Often, I’ve wondered if the lower-billed co-author isn’t actually the primary writer of the book.

In the case of “The Hellfire Club,” no co-author is listed. Only the author’s name: Jake Tapper of CNN News.

It’s all the name that’s needed.

Tapper writes an entertaining and fast-paced thriller set in the McCarthy-era Red Scare politics of the 1950s. 

The book opens with a Chappaquiddick-style car wreck: A drunken congressman awakes on the side of the road, a wrecked car and a dead woman nearby. A man comes to his aid …

Tapper’s trap is set and readers are hooked from there. 

Tapper takes readers back to the weeks leading to the wreck. Readers more fully meet Congressman Charlie Marder, a World War II veteran, a bestselling historical author and a son of privilege. Thanks to his father’s connections, he’s appointed to fill the uncompleted term of a dead congressman.

In trying to find his way as a new member of Congress, Charlie must divine allies from enemies, the art of compromise and a self-denigration, as well as winding his way through the politics of the day from Joe McCarthy’s show trials against communism in America to concerns regarding the effects of comic books on juvenile delinquency.

And secret societies. The secret groups that make the rules among the lawmakers. Groups such as the legendary Hellfire Club.

Tapper writes a well-researched novel. One where his fictional characters repeatedly meet historical figures from the era: McCarthy, President Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Kennedys, Vice President Richard Nixon, etc. With Tapper’s fictional events neatly interwoven with the historical record.

No less than bestselling James Patterson notes in a back-cover blurb that “The Hellfire Club” is “a helluva good read.” Patterson notes that Tapper, as a newsman, is supposed to be writing dull non-fiction, books that are supposed to lull readers to sleep … “not thrillers that keep us up half the night.”

“The Hellfire Club” has a satisfying conclusion and stands on its own. But Tapper allows the ending to suggest the possibility of sequels in the future.

Hopefully, he will write more. If “The Hellfire Club” is any indication, Jake Tapper could quit news and do well as a bestselling novelist.