House Reckoning

May 19, 2014
In Lawson’s enjoyable ninth Joe DeMarco thriller (after 2013’s House Odds), the Congressional fix-it man steps out of the Washington, D.C., political mud to focus on a personal quest: tracking down the man who murdered his father decades ago. DeMarco has long known that his father, Gino, worked for a violent mobster in New York City. Now a dying mobster who knew Gino reveals that a corrupt cop, whose career has since blossomed, was the killer. DeMarco, much to the displeasure of his boss, sleazy Congressman John Mahoney, sets out to avenge his father’s murder. To further complicate his quest, his target is about to assume a high-level government job in Washington. A well-balanced plot reveals the intriguing backstory of the likable DeMarco, who knows that handling life’s problems is often a matter of compromise. Agent: David Gernert, Gernert Company.

June 1, 2014
Now that he's tangled with every kind of Beltway lowlife imaginable (House Odds, 2013, etc.), fixer Joe DeMarco reaches over the miles and years to go after the man who killed his father.Prefiguring his son's complicated relationship to moral and legal ideals, Gino DeMarco was a good guy who kept drawing lines and then crossing them. When he lost his job as a longshoreman and his childhood friend Jerry Kennedy got him work as a bagman for Carmine Taliaferro, he told himself he wouldn't kill anyone, then killed plenty of people, though all of them were criminals. Eventually, his determination to avenge Kennedy's murder made him dispensable, and Carmine had him killed by Brian Quinn, a rising rookie cop also on his books. By the time dying underboss Tony Benedetto sees fit to tell Joe what happened to his old man many years ago, Joe's settled into his job as a bottom feeder at the trough of House Minority Leader John Mahoney, and Quinn, the NYPD commissioner, is about to be nominated director of the FBI. Furious that Mahoney won't back up his attempts to lean on Quinn, Joe threatens his boss with blackmail and promptly gets fired for his pains, leaving him basically alone and unfunded as he confronts an enemy who's wealthy, powerful and surrounded by cops and civilians only too eager to do his bidding. Joe contemplates killing Quinn, torpedoing his nomination and ruining his reputation. When his moment of vengeance finally presents itself, though, it arrives in an utterly unexpected form, with bittersweet results that perfectly balance the demands of the revenge formula with the need to keep Joe afloat for further adventures.Fast, assured and as refreshingly unsentimental as Joe himself.

COPYRIGHT(2014) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

May 1, 2014
Fans of Lawson's fine Joe DeMarco novels will know that Joe's father, Gino, worked for a New York Mafia don, that he was murdered, and that the murder was never solved. But when the don's aged underboss learns that he is dying of cancer, he tells Joe the murderer's identitythe current NYPD commissioner, who has just been nominated to run the FBI. He also tells Joe that Gino was the don's hit man. Reeling from both revelations, Joe wrestles with ending the man's career or ending his life. At the heart of this series have always been DeMarco's bone-deep cynicism; his relationship with his boss, conniving, lecherous, alcoholic House minority leader John Mahoney; and often-hilarious portrayals of congressional chicanery. This time, though, those elements are largely abandoned. Joe is alone in New York, hunted by every cop in the city, and blinded by rage. Readers accustomed to outrageous but almost plausible political knavery may be disappointed, but House Reckoning is a fine thriller with a tense, twisting plot and a sociopathic villain worthy of a seat in the House.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)