The View from the Office. 

I met Peter Rose for lunch at Red Rooster, the iconic Harlem destination restaurant owned by chef Marcus Samuelsson. 

He ordered the jerk salmon and a salad. I had the sweet potato coconut soup with roasted mushrooms, ginger, and biscuit crumble.

Peter is a legend in financial PR circles in New York, having spent long stints managing public affairs at Goldman Sachs and Blackstone. We overlapped professionally years ago when I was Bloomberg’s New York Bureau Chief.

Peter is semi-retired these days but remains busy. He just published a book of historical fiction about Macau called The Good War of Consul Reeves. It tells the story of the Portuguese colony during WWII when it became an island of neutrality surrounded by Japanese-occupied territory, a sort of Asian Casablanca.

The passion project took a total of seven years. He visited archives in Macau, Washington, Miami, Canberra, London, Hong Kong and New York. He mostly wrote the manuscript in the Wertheim Room at the New York Public Library. 

For three years, he gathered research material, including some crucial articles he tracked down in Pan-Am’s flight magazine. It took nine months to organize an outline on index cards before he started writing 2,000 words a day. His first draft came in at 360,000 words before editing. 

The end result is an enjoyable profile of a time and place that’s largely disappeared. It’s told through the eyes of John Reeves, a British diplomat. Reeves is depicted as a lonely, awkward man with a failing marriage, whose career is also on the decline. Despite his personal insecurities, he rises to the occasion during wartime.

While doing the research, Peter discovered Reeves had started to write an autobiography. It’s very rough but periodically there are nuggets that shed light on the man, such as this sentence: “Smoking opium never seems to have done anyone any harm.” 

Peter said he still does some consulting on PR and public affairs, but he’s glad to be out of the day-to-day scrum. The PR business has changed a lot, especially with the widespread use of social media and expansion of podcasts and other news sources. 

What hasn’t changed is the importance of connecting with people and building relationships. 

Peter’s headed to London next week to do a book reading. If you want to find out more about his work you can connect with him on LinkedIn or DM for a warm intro.