Review by Booklist Review
Much to the dismay of his staff, the president of the United States is a compulsive doodler. This time with good reason: a scrawl on the back of a speech should have been discarded. But a staffer was in a hurry, and it wound up at the National Archives. Bombshell: the scrawl refers to a billionaire degenerate known as "a pimp to the rich and famous" (think Jeffrey Epstein). Investigation leads to cover-ups, murders, and a call to Lawson's series hero, "fixer" Joe DeMarco. DeMarco's calm exterior conceals an ocean of pain and rage. But that is a key to what makes the novel a success: the author lets his characters, both good and vile, reveal themselves to us in ways that help the plot. Thus we see the canny Speaker of the House, bare feet up on a coffee table, scratching his armpit. Or Eric Doyle, the President's national security advisor, whose way of handling the uncooperative--disappear 'em--has become a figure of speech: "Doyle's way." This novel invites you to live in it for a bit.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Lawson's darkly satisfying latest (after Kingpin) finds political fixer Joe DeMarco investigating a salacious cover-up by a senior government official in Washington, D.C. Two months after Brandon Cartwright, a billionaire heir known for his raucous sex parties, is killed, National Archives director Porter Hendricks comes across a draft copy of a recent speech the president gave at the United Nations. On the back is a doodle that strongly suggests the president was planning to have Cartwright murdered by his friend, national security adviser Eric Doyle. Hendricks takes the document to former Speaker of the House John Mahoney, who asks DeMarco to look into the matter. Soon after he begins, people connected to the inquiry start turning up dead, prompting him to turn to his friend Emma, a former Defense Intelligence Agency spy, for help. Lawson loads the action with everything fans expect from the series--banter between DeMarco and Emma, new information about DeMarco's hit man father, perfidy at the highest levels of government--and then pushes the plot into uncharted, pitch-black territory, adding a welcome jolt of gravity to DeMarco's adventures. This long-running series still has plenty of gas in the tank. Agent: Mel Berger, WME. (Feb.)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
A few words idly scrawled on the back of the U.S. president's speech to the United Nations propel D.C. fixer Joe DeMarco into his latest round of political intrigue. The cryptic words strongly suggest, but don't prove, that Brandon Cartwright--a billionaire playboy who was murdered along with his personal assistant during a home invasion a month after having been indicted, just like Jeffrey Epstein, for trafficking a minor aboard his yacht--asked the president for a pardon, and that the president decided instead that the problem had to be settled "Doyle's way." The fact that Eric Doyle is the president's national security adviser and close personal friend places Porter Hendricks, head of the National Archives, in a pickle. He can't destroy the document, which has been turned over to the archive by people who didn't notice the handwritten notes on its reverse, and he can't make it public, either. So, he secretly shares his discovery with House Minority Leader John Mahoney, and Mahoney, eager to reclaim his position as speaker of the House by putting pressure on the president, orders DeMarco, his unofficial bagman, to "poke around" enough to confirm that Cartwright was blackmailing the president, who responded by ordering Cartwright's execution. The job looks impossible because nobody wants to admit that anything untoward happened, much less talk on the record, and nobody wants to make an enemy of Eric Doyle, much less the president. Of course, that's what makes DeMarco, DeMarco: He's repeatedly done the impossible before, and fans will be sure that he'll do it again. But that's about all they'll be sure of in this reliably twisty tale. No one makes high-level political corruption as blissfully enjoyable as Lawson. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
