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Mad Men (2007)/S5E7 · At the Codfish Ball/Don in bed with Malamud: The Fixer
Mad Men · Season 5, Episode 7, "At the Codfish Ball"

Don in bed with Malamud: The Fixer

Don Draper (Jon Hamm) · Don and Megan's bedroom

Don in bed with Malamud: The Fixer. Evidence card from Mad Men: The FixerGet credit for sleuthing this sceneDrop the frame
Mad Men · S5 E7Sleuthed by @shelfsleuth
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What it tells you

Megan's parents are in town, and Don is in bed with Bernard Malamud. TV Tropes has Megan mistaking it for a James Bond novel, and Don points her to the real thing instead. Her father is a Marxist professor who doesn't think much of his new son-in-law, so the Pulitzer winner on the nightstand is either a coincidence or a defense.

Sources: The "Mad Men" Reading List, New York Public Library · ShoutOut / Mad Men, TV Tropes · Mad Men: The Literary Hits, Chicago Public Library · Mad Men Recap: Rory Gilmore, the Beatles, Phone-Booth Lies, Time
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The book

Cover of The Fixer by Bernard Malamud

The Fixer

Bernard Malamud · 1966 · novel

Malamud's 1966 novel is based on Menahem Mendel Beilis, a Jewish worker in Kiev put on trial for a blood libel charge in 1913. It won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. It has exactly one thing in common with a Bond novel, and it's that the hero spends time locked up.

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Sleuthed by @shelfsleuth · 2026-10-22

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