A novel retirement plan: Jonathan Lash’s debut work of fiction, ‘What Death Revealed,’ draws from his time as an attorney in 1970s D.C.

Jonathan Lash of Northampton has had a fascinating life. He has been a Peace Corps volunteer, a practicing attorney, an environmental advocate, and a president of Hampshire College.

In his retirement, he has taken on a new career as a novelist. His debut work of fiction, “What Death Revealed” (Austin Macauley Publishers, 378 pages, $23.95), is a historical work set in the District of Columbia in the mid-1970s.

The book has two main protagonists. Jimmy McFarland is an idealistic white District Attorney. In the course of the story, he gets to know (and teams up with) Larry Williams, a seasoned Black police sergeant in D.C.

Another, perhaps even more memorable, character in the book is the city of Washington. Several years after the riots that erupted in 1968 after the death of Martin Luther King, Jr., many areas of the city have yet to recover.

The city also suffers from a longer legacy, that of slavery and Jim Crow. Run by federal legislators, many of whom hail from Southern states with ties to racism and segregation, the city has a population that is predominantly African American.

I spoke to Jonathan Lash about D.C. in the 1970s and about the process of writing the novel. He worked in the District at the time in which the novel was set.

“Right after I came out of the Peace Corps, I went to law school, very much thinking this was a way to fight for justice and social fairness,” he recalled. “I clerked for a wonderful federal judge. And then I decided I should get some experience trying cases.”

He became an Assistant U.S. Attorney in D.C., an unusual position, he explained, because these attorneys are responsible for prosecuting both federal and municipal cases.

“All of a sudden, having been very successful at the intellectual, analytical side of the law, I was in a big city trying cases … working in complicated human situations with an incredible range of people,” he explained.

He found D.C. “a two-faced city: the gleaming capital of the free world and then one of the poorest cities in the country, mostly Black.”

He called the city “a bit of a plantation.”

“There was tremendous racial tension, a very high crime rate, a lot of violence in this city that seemed very separate from the capital,” he noted.

He stated clearly that the book is a work of fiction. The young U.S. Attorney is not Lash himself.

“But of course it is based on experience,” he said. “People I know or worked with got reshaped and became part of the narrative.”

He had no thought of writing fiction upon retirement. He joined a readers’ group, however, and one day the leader gave the group a prompt to write “a dark scene.”

Lash quickly wrote a scene that appears near the beginning of the book, in which the U.S. Attorney and the police sergeant first take each other’s measures.

One of the group members opined that the scene sounded like the beginning of a crime novel … and Lash was off and running.

“These characters bubbled up in my head and wanted to be heard. It was as if they’d been in there for 40 years,” he laughed.

“What Death Revealed” requires an attentive reader — it has a lot of action and a lot of characters — but that reader is rewarded with a distinctive, gripping story. The protagonists uncover not only murder but corruption involving the speedy construction of D.C.’s Metro system.

“The Metro was the largest public work project ever undertaken in Washington,” the author explained. The schedule lagged, and the construction had issues; according to Lash, at one point it looked as though the National Portrait Gallery was going to collapse because of the digging beneath it.

Worried that further delay might affect Congressional funding for the project, the general in charge put the construction on a round-the-clock schedule.

“You can imagine that that was a license to print money … There was a huge amount of corruption from that, some of which I stumbled on, but it was not prosecuted,” Lash remembered.

Lash told me that “What Death Revealed” has pleased him and others so well that he is already halfway through a sequel. I look forward to reading it.

Before I let Jonathan Lash go, I had to ask him about his godmother, Eleanor Roosevelt, who was a heroine to many of my family members. She introduced his parents, and his father, Joseph P. Lash, became a major biographer of the famous First Lady. I asked for an ER story.

“There was a time when we were visiting at Hyde Park when my parents were going out to a dinner which she did not have any interest in attending, and she babysat. I was maybe 6 years old or 5. She read me a story and said, ‘Now, say your prayers.’ We didn’t do that in my family,” Lash confessed.

He recalled that his quick-witted godmother noticed the look on his face and qualified her request. “If you say your prayers. Or you can just close your eyes and think.”

Jonathan Lash did the latter. He has recalled that good advice throughout his life.

“What Death Revealed” is available online and at local bookstores.

Tinky Weisblat is an award-winning writer and singer known as the Diva of Deliciousness. Visit her website, TinkyCooks.com.