House Witness

November 6, 2017
At the start of Lawson’s winning 12th Joe DeMarco thriller (after 2016’s House Revenge), John Mahoney, the minority leader of the House of Representatives, learns that his son has been killed. Still worse, his wife, Mary Pat, doesn’t know he had one. Dominic, who’s the result of Mahoney’s affair many years before with Connie DiNunzio, an aide to a New York congressman, has been killed in a New York City bar by Toby Rosenthal, a rich man’s son who is probably going to try to buy his way out of a conviction. Connie wants vengeance. Mahoney assigns DeMarco, his fixer, the job of making sure Toby goes to jail. Each of the five eyewitnesses to the shooting can identify Toby as the killer, and each becomes the target of a con woman, Ella Fields, whose specialty is witness tampering. Readers will enjoy watching the case unravel and how DeMarco goes about making things right. The action builds to a satisfying resolution, but an open ending promises more troubles for DeMarco down the line. Agent: David Gernert, Gernert Company.

December 1, 2017
Veteran fixer Joe DeMarco, who's never met a problem he couldn't solve by hook or by crook, goes up against a criminal as canny and resourceful as he is.Five eyewitnesses see Toby Rosenthal run from McGill's bar after he shoots accountant Dominic DiNunzio to death following a brief, apparently routine altercation. The case against Toby would be open and shut if his boss and father, Henry, weren't an immensely wealthy and well-connected lawyer. David Slade, the criminal defense attorney Henry hires to defend his son, sees only one path to acquittal: contacting a self-described jury consultant he's heard about who goes to exceptionally active lengths to alter the facts on the ground. When Henry agrees, Slade unleashes his dark, expensive ally, who promptly goes to work bribing, blackmailing, and murdering those five witnesses. Luckily for the forces of justice--if Lawson believes in such a thing--DiNunzio was the unacknowledged offspring of House Minority Leader John Mahoney, who, having never met his son in life, is determined to avenge him in death. So Mahoney unleashes his own not-so-secret weapon, Joe DeMarco (House Rivals, 2015, etc.), who begins by assuming that his services won't be needed but then realizes that those five witnesses are endangered species who'll vanish from the Earth if he can't figure out who's marked them to be neutralized. The resulting game of cat and cat--DeMarco scrambles to identify and defang that jury consultant before the defense succeeds in discrediting or disposing of all the witnesses and providing an innocent alternative defendant to boot--is irresistible.Eminently predictable in its larger contours--but the devil is in the details, and Lawson's details are unfailingly devilish, right down to the very last twist. A perfect candidate for in-flight entertainment for readers confident that their seatmates can't possibly be carrying.

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Starred review from November 1, 2017
A married accountant with three children is murdered in a Manhattan bar. The accountant is the son of House Minority Leader John Mahoney, but Mahoney has kept that little fact secret from his wife. Five witnesses identify the shooter, the feckless son of a wealthy Manhattan corporate attorney. The case should be open and shut, but the savvy ADA who will try it has heard from other prosecutors about how very rich perps have skated because eyewitnesses disappeared or changed their testimony. Mahoney's fixer, Joe DeMarco, becomes a reluctant, temporary special investigator for the Manhattan DA's office, and he begins to search nationwide for the shadowy people who arrange for the very wealthy to purchase exoneration. Each of Lawson's DeMarco novels have been first-rate, but House Witness may be the best yet. DeMarco's investigation and the machinations of the witness tamperers are skillfully detailed and thoroughly involving, but the love affair between two of the criminals is an unexpected bonus. Readers will once again find themselves comparing Lawson to the late, great Ross Thomas.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)

September 1, 2017

Political fixer Joe DeMarco must investigate the shooting death of the son his employer, House minority leader John Mahoney, has kept secret from his wife. When someone starts interfering with the witnesses in a disturbing echo of cases nationwide, Joe sees that he's up against a fixer of a different sort. Look for a big push at PLA and ALA Midwinter.

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