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BookBrowse Reviews The Inside Ring by Mike Lawson

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The Inside Ring by Mike Lawson

The Inside Ring

by Mike Lawson
  • Critics' Consensus:
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  • First Published:
  • May 1, 2005, 272 pages
  • Paperback:
  • Aug 2006, 336 pages
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A witty, lightning-read set in Washington D.C. Thriller/1st Novel

From the book jacket:: From a bluff overlooking Georgia's untamed Chattooga River, an assassin fires three shots. The President of the United States is wounded; his best friend and a Secret Service agent are killed. Days before, General Andy Banks, the Secretary of Homeland Security, received a note with a dire warning which he immediately passed to to Secret Service Director, Patrick Donnelly, who proceeded to ignore it.

Now, Banks is determined to dig a little deeper. He turns to the Speaker of the House, John Fitzgerald Mahoney. The Speaker has an under-the-radar, go-to guy he uses for things like this - things he can't afford to have connected to his office. The guy is Joe DeMarco, an honest lawyer with a sordid family history.

After one meeting with Banks, DeMarco realizes he's in way over his head. But Mahoney finds the prospect of taking down Donnelly irresistible and sets DeMarco on a trail that twists through the Secret Service, the FBI, and the Department of Homeland Security, and snakes all the way back to one of the more enduring mysteries of the twentieth century.

Comment: Conspiracy theorists and lovers of quality thrillers rejoice! There's a new player in town in the form of Michael Lawson.

Lawson says that when planning this, his first book, he decided a number of things.  First he wanted to have the same series lead through a  number of books so that he wouldn't have to invent new characters for every book and so that he could set all the books in Washington D.C. because he loves the city, has lived and worked there and understands "a bit about how the government works from my former career."  He also decided that the world of fiction didn't need another detective or cop protagonist so came up with the idea of DeMarco, a lawyer and average guy who works for the Speaker of the House of Representatives.  However, the most important reason for setting his series in Washington D.C. was because he "could pick up a paper any day of the week and read about the shenanigans taking place in Washington and get an idea for a plot for another novel!"

Selected Review:
"[A] tight and engaging story, sharp writing and dialogue that's good to the last line." - Kirkus.

This review was originally published in The BookBrowse Review in June 2005, and has been updated for the August 2006 edition. Click here to go to this issue.

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