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Critics' Opinion:
Readers' Opinion:
First Published:
May 2005, 272 pages
Paperback:
Aug 2006, 336 pages
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.
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