The 500

April 2, 2012
Former Atlantic reporter Quirk’s engaging first novel transplants the milieu of Grisham’s The Firm to the world of political lobbyists. After being recruited by Washington’s leading consulting firm, the Davies Group, Harvard law student Mike Ford thinks he’s left behind his blue-collar upbringing. While lobbying policymakers for his new mentor, firm founder Henry Davies, Mike gains a taste of what it’s like to belong to America’s political elite and begins dating his beautiful and patrician colleague, Annie Clark. Mike’s work proves, however, to call less upon his political ideals than on criminal skills first acquired from his jailed con man father. As Mike ascends the Davies Group’s hierarchy, he gradually realizes that the firm conceals a sinister political conspiracy. Quirk supplies just enough characterization and journalistic detail of Washington, D.C., life to ground his story as he launches into a streamlined, gripping man-on-the-run thriller. 10-city author tour. Agent: Shawn Coyne, the Endeavor Agency.

May 1, 2012
Washington, D.C., is the setting for this John Grisham-style thriller about a recent Harvard Law graduate who gets in way over his head at a sinister consulting and PR firm that will stop at nothing to control all 500 of the capital's top movers and shakers. Mike Ford thinks he's got it made working for Henry Davies, who shuttles between jobs as a distinguished Harvard professor and a seasoned "fixer" in Washington who worked for Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon. Ford's $200,000 salary will chase away his massive college debt, Davies' influence promises to get his con man father out of prison, and a beautiful senior consultant named Annie is his for the asking. Not bad for a scuffling blue-collar kid whose life seemed headed in another direction when he joined the Navy at 19. But it isn't long before Ford detects hidden agendas behind his assignment of cozying up to and collecting secrets about a congressman. He starts spying on his bosses, attaching GPS devices to cars, and getting himself threatened and hurt. The players include a Serbian war criminal called Rado; a Supreme Court justice with a Beretta and a human rights case before him; and Rado's seductive 23-year-old daughter, whom the justice is accused of abusing. Quirk's first novel is a breezy but not always sure-footed tale. As first-person narrators go, Ford doesn't make much of an impression, offering the usual mix of self-consciousness, regret and callow determination. If this book is filmed (20th Century Fox acquired the screen rights), it likely will lose its cheaper plot devices and rely less on a letter containing the only piece of dirt that can bring its villain down. A book that offers lots of action and gloomy shadows but not much dramatic traction.

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January 1, 2012

Having done time at the Atlantic, reporting on crime and other assorted evils, Quirk should get the details right in this debut thriller starring Harvard Law grad Mike Ford. Even as Mike rubs shoulders with Washington, DC's powerful 500, his past among shabby con men comes calling. A ten-city tour, film rights sold to 20th Century Fox, foreign rights sold to 11 territories--here's one debut that looks to be making it big.

Copyright 2012 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from May 1, 2012
In his first novel, journalist Quirk takes on the Washington, D.C., power structure in a thundering David-and-Goliath tale of corruption. Mike Ford is struggling to pay his tuition at Harvard law and settle his incarcerated father's debt when he's recruited by Henry Davies, who heads D.C.'s most influential consulting firm. Ford soon learns that the job, despite its six-figure salary, multiple perks, and enticing colleague, Annie Clark, is essentially a con game in which the Davies Group seeks to solidify influence with the 500 people who wield the real power inside the Beltway. And Ford, who learned cons, grifts, and more from his father, brings a special skill set to the game. Assigned to work on a job to amend a foreign-relations law to benefit a Serbian war criminal, he finagles a recording that indicates the lengths to which Davies will go to achieve its ends, thus embarking on a deadly cat-and-mouse game with his boss, trained killer William Marcus, and Davies himself. It leads, inevitably, to a final moral dilemma. Expect this propulsive page-turner, with high-stakes action that doesn't stop, to be one of the season's most talked-about debut thrillers. A sequel is in the offing and will be much anticipated. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: With movie rights sold just days after the book itself, the publisher will be orchestrating a blockbuster launch.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)