House Rivals

May 25, 2015
In the prologue of Lawson’s workmanlike 10th Joe DeMarco thriller (after 2014’s House Reckoning), three men assault Sarah Johnson, a muckraking blogger who’s trying to expose corruption in Montana and North and South Dakota, late one night behind a restaurant. One of her attackers delivers a chilling warning—next time “we’ll tie you naked to a tree and leave you for the wolves”—before letting her go. Wealthy Leonard Curtis, an independent natural gas driller, has set his dogs on Sarah: a pair of down-market fixers, Marjorie Dawkins and Bill Logan, who hired the assailants. Sarah’s grandfather calls on an old friend for help, House Minority Leader John Fitzpatrick Mahoney, who’s DeMarco’s employer and “as corrupt as any congressman on Capitol Hill.” Sent west to deal with the problem, DeMarco comes to admire Sarah’s resolve and crusade. This is a decent, though familiar, story—the individual pitted against big business and the state—and Lawson spells out every plot point and emotion along the way. Agent: David Gernert, Gernert Company.

May 1, 2015
D.C. fixer Joe DeMarco, posted to the wilds of North Dakota, schemes to avenge the death of a young woman he was sent there to protect. Maybe 50 people read Sarah Johnson's blog posts ranting about the systematic low-level bribery of state lawmakers. But when Sarah begins linking the bribes to billionaire independent natural gas driller Leonard Curtis, he gets madder than hell and decides he doesn't have to take it anymore. So he calls D&L Consulting, his longtime fixers-cum-bagmen in Bismarck, and asks partners Marjorie Dawkins and Bill Logan to quit threatening Sarah and shut her up for good, unaware that a potential rescuer is already on the way. Sarah's grandfather Doug Thorpe, a Marine who saved John Mahoney's life in Vietnam, reaches out to Mahoney, now minority leader of the U.S. House of Representatives, and Mahoney dispatches DeMarco, his own fixer-cum-bagman, to Bismarck to make sure nothing happens to Sarah. DeMarco's way of dealing with the problem, trying to dig up politically connected people who'll turn informant against Curtis, doesn't pan out, and one night, DeMarco, instead of responding to Sarah's phone summons, beds a local schoolteacher instead. The next day, Sarah's dead, shot apparently by a burglar she interrupted but actually, as both DeMarco and the reader are quick to appreciate, by a hit man Marjorie and Bill have hired to kill her. Under pressure from both Mahoney and Thorpe, remorseful DeMarco, aided by the world's most reluctant FBI agent, assures anyone who'll listen, including Marjorie and Thorpe, that he's going to nail their hides to the wall. And so he does, very entertainingly, though not quite in the way he expected. After DeMarco's unwontedly personal stake in finding his father's murderer (House Reckoning, 2014), it's nice to see him go up against some fixers as impersonal as him. Everything here, from the hard-case characters to the headlong pace, is professional-grade.

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May 1, 2015
This tenth Joe DeMarco political thriller (following House Reckoning, 2014) tackles the murky world of state and local politics with the series' hallmark blend of danger and cynical wit. An old friend contacts Congressman John Mahoney with concerns about his granddaughter's safety, so Mahoney sends fixer DeMarco to Bismarck, North Dakota. Sarah Johnson is a blogger obsessed with outing the misdeeds of energy tycoon Leonard Curtis, whom she is convinced is bribing local decision-makers to favor his fracking ventures. Sarah doesn't have solid evidence, but her investigation has uncovered earmarks of carefully concealed bribes, and a terrifying attack signals that she's onto something. That's when the really bad stuff starts, leaving DeMarco feeling guilty and with some serious scores to settle. This is a solid thriller, both suspenseful and smart, much in the manner of the great Ross Thomas, and an eye-opening portrayal of often-overlooked political machinations on both sides of the narrow legal line.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)

February 1, 2015

In his tenth outing, Joe DeMarco heads to North Dakota to protect 22-year-old blogger Sarah Johnson, who's been gunning for a billionaire oil tycoon she suspects of bribery. Things get ugly fast. From a three-time Barry Award finalist.

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