Bob Schieffer opened his interview with “Mortal Friends” author Jane Stanton Hitchcock with the same question on every long-time Washingtonian’s mind…

“I’m going to ask the obvious question- am I in this book?”

On CBS’ webcast “Washington Unplugged,” the novelist, and wife of WaPo foreign affairs editor Jim Hoagland, described her latest as “a book about how Washington really works, how friendships really work and how old haunts of the past can come back to you.”

“Mortal Friends” hits bookshelves today and is a murder-mystery (Hitchcock prefers to call it a novel with a murder in it) set to the background of Washington. She says DC makes the perfect backdrop because life here is like “high school with wrinkles.” Hitchcock says there’s an official and a superficial Washington- her novel is about the superficial, which is “where most of the work gets done.”

And just how is Washington run? “Honey, it is run by the women,” she told Schieffer. “They may look like wonderful accessories in pastel suits but, honey, they are artfully concealed weapons of mass destruction.”

Hitchcock starts her “Mortal Friends” media blitz this week, and from what we can tell so far, it’s a Washington must-read.

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