Dead Watch

Richard Ferrone has performed almost all of John Sandford's books. Here he's cast as Jake Winter, special assistant to the president's chief of staff, who is investigating the gruesome death of an outspoken U.S. senator. Ferrone has several strengths, and you can tell he gets into his characters. He also knows how to ratchet up the excitement, which is especially important as Sandford starts all of his action sentences with verbs. Jake Winter is a welcome addition to the author's cast of characters. One hopes that Winter will join Sandford's other protagonists--Lucas Davenport, Kidd, and the "Night Crew"--and become a Sandford regular. A.L.H. (c) AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine

March 13, 2006
When Lincoln Bowe, a controversial Republican ex-senator, disappears at the start of this fast-paced thriller from bestseller Sandford (Broken Prey
), the White House puts Jacob Winter, a veteran political operative with "an uncanny ability to navigate the world of bureaucracy," on the case. Bowe vanished shortly after making a fiery speech denouncing a rival, Arlo Goodman, the governor of Virginia and a demagogue who heads a volunteer militia group known as the Watchmen. When Bowe's burnt and headless corpse turns up, Winter is under even more pressure to discover those behind his murder. Aided by the dead man's attractive and possibly duplicitous widow, Madison, the fixer follows a trail of corpses and deception that suggests the killing may have been a staged piece of theater intended to derail Goodman's ascent to the presidency. Readers interested in a quick diverting romp without much gravitas will enjoy this, but serious Beltway fiction junkies might prefer their political thrillers to be a little more plausible. 500,000 announced first printing.