D.C. Dead

October 31, 2011
Bestseller Woods’s lackluster 22nd Stone Barrington novel (after 2011’s Son of Stone) takes the New York City lawyer and his NYPD sidekick, Lt. Dino Bacchetti, to Washington, D.C. There, the U.S. president asks Stone, a retired homicide detective, and Dino, to look into a year-old murder case close to home. The FBI concluded that Brixton Kendrick, the White House’s manager “in charge of the physical plant and office arrangements,” murdered his wife, the president’s social secretary, then hanged himself, but the president and the first lady, who’s also the intelligence director, have their doubts. “FBI agents are not awfully good at investigating homicides,” the first lady remarks. Stone’s romance with Holly Barker, “an assistant deputy director for the CIA,” provides some heat, while further murders raise the stakes. A redundant subplot involving a fugitive former CIA agent adds little to the main story line. A fast pace compensates only in part for superficial characters with a penchant for spewing one-liners.

December 1, 2011
Now that their sons have gone off to Yale in a blaze of triumph (Son of Stone, 2011), super-lawyer Stone Barrington and his friend Lt. Dino Bacchetti, NYPD, get called back to Washington to do what they do worst: investigate a murder. Talk about your closed cases. The very day that first lady Katharine Rule Lee's social secretary Emily Kendrick was found bashed to death, Mimi's husband Brixton Kendrick hanged himself, leaving behind a note taking full responsibility. Nor did an FBI investigation turn up any new suspects. But President Will Lee's not satisfied. He wants Stone and Dino to find out the truth. It's obvious that he's made a wise choice, because hours after going on the job, Dino finds the murder weapon on the White House grounds, where it had lain unnoticed for a whole year. Stone, pursuing his own distinctive brand of undercover work, learns that Brix was more than the White House manager; he was an insatiable adulterer, one of whose paramours, the one he playfully dubbed "the March Hare," presumably killed Mimi. This party wouldn't be complete without some strands left over from Woods' earlier work (Mounting Fears, 2009, etc.). So utility assassin Teddy Fay, spotted by hapless CIA agent Todd Bacon, rouses himself to offer a mutual nonaggression pact to CIA assistant deputy director Holly Barker. While they're waiting for this deal to sour, readers get to watch Stone bed Holly and two less fortunate ladies whose deaths mark Stone as a Calamity John and make it obvious, through process of elimination, who the March Hare is. Acknowledging the fact that everyone in the nation's capital knows everything about everyone else, Stone and Dino develop a mantra--"It's Washington"--that serves as the perfect model for another gauge of familiarity--"It's Woods."

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November 15, 2011
Woods brings Stone Barrington and his right-hand man, Dino Bacchetti, to Washington, D.C., to uncover the truth about the murder-suicide of two White House employees. President Will Lee and his wife, CIA director Katherine Rule Lee, don't believe that Brix Kendrick bludgeoned his wife, Mimi, to death shortly before he took his own life, and ask Stone and Dino to look into the matter with the help of CIA agent Holly Barker. Stone and Dino discover that Brix was far from a faithful husband; the man had lovers all over the city. As soon as Stone and Dino begin to question Brix's former lovers, the women start turning up deadmurdered the same way Mimi Kendrick was. While Holly helps Stone and Dino with their investigation, she hopes she can close the door on the pursuit of Teddy Fay. The former CIA operative turned assassin has issued an ultimatum: if the CIA doesn't stop chasing him, he'll retaliate. An exciting entry that possibly wraps up one of the longest-running story threads in Woods' popular series.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)