Sign up for our newsletters to receive our Best of 2024 ezine!

Summary and Reviews of The Inside Ring by Mike Lawson

The Inside Ring by Mike Lawson

The Inside Ring

by Mike Lawson
  • Critics' Consensus (3):
  • Readers' Rating (1):
  • First Published:
  • May 1, 2005, 272 pages
  • Paperback:
  • Aug 2006, 336 pages
  • Rate this book

About This Book

Book Summary

A Washington conspiracy thriller in which 'the bad guys are sufficiently evil, the plot properly labyrinthine, the solution to the mystery completely satisfying. This is high-level entertainment from a writer who could soon rise to the top of the thriller heap'.

"The video begins with the President walking toward a marine helicopter . . ."

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. Two days later, a man in Landover, Maryland, commits suicide and in the man's home is overwhelming evidence that he was responsible for the assassination attempt.

General Andy Banks, the Secretary of Homeland Security, is nursing a guilty conscience. Only days before the assassination attempt on the President, Banks had received a note with a dire warning: "Eagle One is in danger. Cancel Chattooga River. The inside ring has been compromised. This is not a joke." The message - on Secret Service stationery - was signed "An agent in the wrong place." Banks immediately passed the note on to Secret Service Director Patrick Donnelly, who proceeded to ignore it.

Even after the assassin is found dead, Banks is determined to dig a little deeper. He turns to 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.

Brimming with suspense, authenticity, and wit, The Inside Ring marks the debut of a major new talent and introduces a cast of intriguing characters with many more cases ahead.

Chapter 1

The receptionist--Boston-bred, fiftysomething, hard and bright as stainless steel--arched a disapproving eyebrow at DeMarco as he entered Mahoney's offices.

"You're late," she said. "And he's in a mood today."

"So since I'm late I guess that means I can go right in," DeMarco said.

The receptionist was married to a successful accountant, a very nice man, very slim and neat and considerate. On those rare occasions they made love she fantasized about burly Italian construction workers. She used to fantasize about black men with washboard abs and shaved heads but the last few months it had been men who looked like DeMarco: dark hair, blue eyes, a Travolta dimple in his chin--and arms and shoulders made for wife-beater undershirts. However, fantasy man or not, she didn'...

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Reviews

Media Reviews

Booklist - David Pitt
The author, who was an "independent contractor" for the U.S. Navy, seems to know what he's talking about; and clearly DeMarco is being positioned as a series lead. So far so good.

Kirkus Reviews
A fresh and entertaining thriller about plots and corruption in places low and high.....Tight and engaging story, sharp writing and dialogue that's good to the last line.

Publishers Weekly
The bad guys are sufficiently evil, the plot properly labyrinthine, the solution to the mystery completely satisfying. This is high-level entertainment from a writer who could soon rise to the top of the thriller heap.

Reader Reviews

J.R. Anderson

Guilty PleasureThriller
Mr. Lawson has painted an impressionist picture with sharply delineated points of detail. His lead character is believable and capable without being superhuman. The supporting characters with their (not always endearing) quirks add richly to his ...   Read More

Write your own review!

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Beyond the Book



Michael Lawson was raised in Pueblo, Colorado and attended college at Seattle University, receiving a degree in engineering. On leaving college he went to work for the US Navy as a nuclear engineer, spending approximately thirty years working for the Navy's nuclear power program. Some of this time was spent in Washington D.C. but most was spent at a large naval shipyard in Bremerton, Washington.

At the shipyard he managed a number of different organizations related to overhauling ...

This "beyond the book" feature is available to non-members for a limited time. Join today for full access.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Read-Alikes

Read-Alikes Full readalike results are for members only

If you liked The Inside Ring, try these:

  • The Sadness of the Samurai jacket

    The Sadness of the Samurai

    by Victor del Arbol

    Published 2012

    About this book

    A betrayal and a murder in pro-Nazi Spain spark a struggle for power that grips a family for generations in this sweeping historical thriller.

  • A Spy by Nature jacket

    A Spy by Nature

    by Charles Cumming

    Published 2008

    About this book

    More by this author

    Alec Milius is young, smart, and ambitious. He also has a talent for deception. He is working in a dead-end job when a chance encounter leads him to MI6, the elite British Secret Intelligence Service, handing him an opportunity to play center-stage in a dangerous game of espionage. In his new line of work, Alec finds that the difference between ...

We have 6 read-alikes for The Inside Ring, but non-members are limited to two results. To see the complete list of this book's read-alikes, you need to be a member.
More books by Mike Lawson
Search read-alikes
How we choose read-alikes
Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Top Picks

  • Book Jacket: Small Rain
    Small Rain
    by Garth Greenwell
    At the beginning of Garth Greenwell's novel Small Rain, the protagonist, an unnamed poet in his ...
  • Book Jacket: Daughters of Shandong
    Daughters of Shandong
    by Eve J. Chung
    Daughters of Shandong is the debut novel of Eve J. Chung, a human rights lawyer living in New York. ...
  • Book Jacket: The Women
    The Women
    by Kristin Hannah
    Kristin Hannah's latest historical epic, The Women, is a story of how a war shaped a generation ...
  • Book Jacket: The Wide Wide Sea
    The Wide Wide Sea
    by Hampton Sides
    By 1775, 48-year-old Captain James Cook had completed two highly successful voyages of discovery and...

BookBrowse Book Club

Book Jacket
In Our Midst
by Nancy Jensen
In Our Midst follows a German immigrant family’s fight for freedom after their internment post–Pearl Harbor.
Who Said...

Silent gratitude isn't much use to anyone

Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!

Wordplay

Big Holiday Wordplay 2024

Enter Now