Now you can browse new titles by year.

BookBrowse Reviews The Inside Ring by Mike Lawson

Summary |  Excerpt |  Reviews |  Beyond the book |  Read-Alikes |  Genres & Themes |  Author Bio

The Inside Ring by Mike Lawson

The Inside Ring

by Mike Lawson
  • Critics' Consensus:
  • Readers' Rating:
  • First Published:
  • May 1, 2005, 272 pages
  • Paperback:
  • Aug 2006, 336 pages
  • Rate this book

  • Buy This Book

About This Book

Reviews

BookBrowse:


A witty, lightning-read set in Washington D.C. Thriller/1st Novel

From the book jacket:: From a bluff overlooking Georgia's untamed Chattooga River, an assassin fires three shots. The President of the United States is wounded; his best friend and a Secret Service agent are killed. Days before, General Andy Banks, the Secretary of Homeland Security, received a note with a dire warning which he immediately passed to to Secret Service Director, Patrick Donnelly, who proceeded to ignore it.

Now, Banks is determined to dig a little deeper. He turns to the Speaker of the House, John Fitzgerald Mahoney. The Speaker has an under-the-radar, go-to guy he uses for things like this - things he can't afford to have connected to his office. The guy is Joe DeMarco, an honest lawyer with a sordid family history.

After one meeting with Banks, DeMarco realizes he's in way over his head. But Mahoney finds the prospect of taking down Donnelly irresistible and sets DeMarco on a trail that twists through the Secret Service, the FBI, and the Department of Homeland Security, and snakes all the way back to one of the more enduring mysteries of the twentieth century.

Comment: Conspiracy theorists and lovers of quality thrillers rejoice! There's a new player in town in the form of Michael Lawson.

Lawson says that when planning this, his first book, he decided a number of things.  First he wanted to have the same series lead through a  number of books so that he wouldn't have to invent new characters for every book and so that he could set all the books in Washington D.C. because he loves the city, has lived and worked there and understands "a bit about how the government works from my former career."  He also decided that the world of fiction didn't need another detective or cop protagonist so came up with the idea of DeMarco, a lawyer and average guy who works for the Speaker of the House of Representatives.  However, the most important reason for setting his series in Washington D.C. was because he "could pick up a paper any day of the week and read about the shenanigans taking place in Washington and get an idea for a plot for another novel!"

Selected Review:
"[A] tight and engaging story, sharp writing and dialogue that's good to the last line." - Kirkus.

This review was originally published in The BookBrowse Review in June 2005, and has been updated for the August 2006 edition. Click here to go to this issue.

This review is available to non-members for a limited time. For full access become a member today.
Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Read-Alikes

Read-Alikes Full readalike results are for members only

If you liked The Inside Ring, try these:

  • The Sadness of the Samurai jacket

    The Sadness of the Samurai

    by Victor del Arbol

    Published 2012

    About This book

    A betrayal and a murder in pro-Nazi Spain spark a struggle for power that grips a family for generations in this sweeping historical thriller.

  • A Spy by Nature jacket

    A Spy by Nature

    by Charles Cumming

    Published 2008

    About This book

    More by this author

    Alec Milius is young, smart, and ambitious. He also has a talent for deception. He is working in a dead-end job when a chance encounter leads him to MI6, the elite British Secret Intelligence Service, handing him an opportunity to play center-stage in a dangerous game of espionage. In his new line of work, Alec finds that the difference between ...

We have 6 read-alikes for The Inside Ring, but non-members are limited to two results. To see the complete list of this book's read-alikes, you need to be a member.
More books by Mike Lawson
Search read-alikes
How we choose read-alikes

Top Picks

  • Book Jacket: The Schubert Treatment
    The Schubert Treatment
    by Claire Oppert
    Claire Oppert fell in love with music at an early age and trained to make a career as a classical ...
  • Book Jacket
    Murder by Degrees
    by Ritu Mukerji
    Lydia Weston is among the first wave of female physicians and professors in the United States. ...
  • Book Jacket: Women's Hotel
    Women's Hotel
    by Daniel M. Lavery
    In the 1920s–1960s, the Barbizon Hotel for Women was a residential hotel where respectable ...
  • Book Jacket: Intermezzo
    Intermezzo
    by Sally Rooney
    In 2022, Sally Rooney delivered a lecture that later ran in The Paris Review, in which she stated ...

Members Recommend

  • Book Jacket

    Libby Lost and Found
    by Stephanie Booth

    Libby Lost and Found is a book for people who don't know who they are without the books they love.

Who Said...

The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people ...

Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!

Wordplay

Solve this clue:

H I O the G

and be entered to win..

Your guide toexceptional          books

BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.