Even though she left the District for Dubai, former Politico gossip scribe Karin Tanabe is still leaving an impression. Her forthcoming novel "The List" got a starred review this week from Publishers Weekly, which also shed more light on the work of fiction's plot.

Tanabe's main character is journalist Adrienne Brown, who "sacrifices sleep, sanity, and sex to feed the wonky digital/paper beast the Capitolist -- or 'the List,'" Publishers Weekly writes. "Adrienne slaves in relative obscurity as a 'Style section girl' at this Beltway must-read, blasting out celebrity interviews on her never-turned-off Blackberry." Luckily, even though Brown is relegated to writing fluff, she gets a big scoop -- finding out that the List's White House reporter Olivia Campo is sleeping with a married U.S. senator. And there are mysterious deaths attached to the affair, to boot.

Publishers Weekly also says that Tanabe's "roman-?-clef is a hilarious skewering of digital journalism -- and how news is tweeted and blogged at a dizzying pace by armies of underpaid and overworked 20-something journos." Ouch.

Tanabe left Politico Click in January to work as a journalist in the United Arab Emirates. "The List" is her first book and will be released Feb. 5, 2013.