House Odds: A Joe DeMarco Thriller (Joe DeMarco Thrillers)
When House Minority Leader John Patrick Mahoneys daughter, Molly, is arrested for insider trading, Joe DeMarco, Mahoney’s personal troubleshooter, is pulled from his dentist’s chair to investigate. Joe, as cynical as Mahoney is Machiavellian, knows Molly and is convinced that the quiet young engineer is an innocent victim of identity theft, but he also suspects that the real target may be Mahoney himself. In short order, DeMarco winds up in a bubbling cauldron of crime, political knavery, and ne’er-do-wells, including a Philly mobster, his Atlantic City casino manager, their thugs, a crazy Manhattan financial wheeler-dealer, and two former college football teammates. Hovering over it all is the never-ending guerrilla war that is partisan politics in a gridlocked House of Representatives, a conflict less popular with citizens than head lice. Lawson has written another fine installment in his DeMarco series, filled with vividly drawn characters, a plot with more bends than the Mississippi River, a brisk pace, and a fine sense of inside-the-Beltway verisimilitude. --Thomas Gaughan