Flashpoint

July 8, 2013
A cynical view of the electoral process enlivens Gorman’s entertaining fourth mystery featuring political consultant Dev Conrad (after 2012’s Blindside). At a major fund-raiser in Chicago, incumbent Sen. Robert Logan fails to heed Conrad’s warning to stay away from stunning Tracy Cabot, who’s been following Logan’s campaign all over Illinois. Four days later, Logan’s re-election chances plummet after the discovery of Cabot’s body on the floor of his remote cabin. Conrad picks up a hint that “political saboteur” Howie Ruskin was connected with Cabot and perhaps behind her involvement with Logan, but is flummoxed when Ruskin turns to him for help with a problem. Conrad has a full plate with Logan’s fractured family, including his emotionally fragile wife and his womanizing younger brother. Meanwhile, a contrite, ready to resign Logan still holds something back. Everyone has secrets, and Conrad has to unravel enough of them to find a killer and salvage a candidate. Agent: Dominick Abel, Dominick Abel Literary Agency.

August 15, 2013
Skullduggery-cum-homicide threatens yet another of Chicago political consultant Dev Conrad's clients. Robert Logan may be the incumbent senator from Illinois, but his eye for the ladies makes him vulnerable to all sorts of family-values innuendo and worse. The loyalties of his wife, Elise, and his coed daughter Maddy, already tested by a fling he had years ago, are stretched to the limit by his fascination with Tracy Cabot, the mysterious glamourpuss who turns up at one campaign event after another. Tracy obviously represents some sort of trap for the candidate, but her true potential for sowing havoc isn't realized until she turns up beaten to death in Logan's fishing cabin in rural Linton. The campaign immediately goes into entertaining overdrive to protect the candidate from the heaviest mudslinging. Dev gets hotshot attorney Ben Zuckerman to fly into Linton, bribes hotel bellman Earl Leonard to let him turn over Tracy's hotel room, and churns the waters looking for material to use in a counterattack against Logan's opponent, folksy insurance-exec millionaire Charlie Shay. The candidate goes on TV to offer condolences to Tracy's family and blandly assure the voters that he had nothing to do with her death. In short, it's all business as usual. Even Dev's contact with Howie Ruskin, the political saboteur with whom Tracy was working to bring down Logan, seems familiar as well, at least until Ruskin gets shot. Even so, it's hard getting worked up over rumors of a conspiracy against Logan when so many of the cast members are conspiracy theorists and when it's pretty obvious that at least some of them are onto something. A lesser installment in the colorful career of Dev (Blindside, 2012, etc.), who sounds perfectly sincere when he maintains that "[p]olitical consultants pray every waking moment."

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September 1, 2013

In a story as old as time, a dead woman turns up in a politician's home, and the politician (Sen. Robert Logan) swears he knows nothing. Dev Conrad, Logan's political consultant (who happens to have a background in army intelligence) cleans up the situation and tries to clear his candidate's name. As Dev learns more about the victim--for starters, she worked as a political operative for a notoriously right-wing organization--he wonders if Logan was caught up in something more complex than simple dirty politics. He's seriously considering conspiracy theories when the next victim falls. Let the pursuit of justice begin. VERDICT Short chapters, biting prose, and a clever twist keep this political thriller moving at a breakneck pace. Political junkies will appreciate the fourth entry (after Blindside).

Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 1, 2013
In his fourth outing, Chicago-based political consultant Dev Conrad is trying to bail his client, a U.S. senator, out of trouble: the woman the senator has been seeing, who turns out to be working for a right-wing political organization, is murdered at the senator's cabin. And, of course, the senator is married and has a history of indiscretions. Similar to Eric Dezenhall's series about political consultant Jonah Eastman, but not as lighthearted, the Dev Conrad mysteries showcase Gorman's gifts for creating realistic characters and plotting suspenseful stories.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)