“House Odds” by Mike Lawson (Atlantic)

The Latest Joe DeMarco Political Thriller

Washington D.C. fixer Joe DeMarco has been asked to handle a lot of difficult situations over the years for his boss, congressman John Mahoney. But nothing has ever been quite so politically sensitive, or has hit so close to home, as the task Mahoney hands DeMarco now.

Mahoney’s daughter, Molly, has been arrested and charged with insider trading. An engineer with a high-flying technology firm, she allegedly placed a half-million dollar bet on one of the firm’s clients. DeMarco’s job is to clear Molly’s name and keep his boss clean. But how did Molly get her hands on so much money to invest in the first place? Before long, DeMarco uncovers that there’s far more to Molly’s case than meets the eye, and the risk to Mahoney is more than just a little political embarrassment.

In this eighth novel featuring Congressional fixer Joe DeMarco, we get a look at the sordid underbelly of Beltway politics, complete with manipulative gangsters and politicians, crooks and thieves. I’m a big fan of this series, ever since I read the first in the series, The Inside Ring in a single day. Each new novel has been an addictive, well-written and expertly-plotted thriller. House Odds is no exception.

Gore Vidal’s “Narratives of Empire” Series

Has anyone read these? The series, Narratives of Empire is also sometimes known as The Chronicles of America. I’m really interested in reading them (American history and fiction = bound to attract my attention). Most of all, I’m interested in reading WASHINGTON, D.C. (mentioned in Mark Leibovich’s This Town, which I finished last night). Here’s the synopsis:

"History is gossip," says a protagonist in Washington, D.C., "but the trick is determining which gossip is history."

It is a trick that Gore Vidal has mastered in his ongoing chronicle of that circus of opportunism and hypocrisy called American politics and which he plays with renewed vigour in this expose of the nation’s capital.

Young Clay Overbury, Senator Burden Day’s assistant, has both a modest background and immense ambitions. Extremely handsome, oozing charm and seemingly dedicated to the Senator’s cause, he is also duplicitous, conniving, and disloyal. But Enid Canford doesn’t think so: she marries him, so providing the Sanford newspaper dynasty with a direct line to the Senator. Her father Blaise, at first loathing his son-in-law, later learns to love him - for all the wrong reasons.

So begins this tale of lust and ambition set in the Republic’s high noon. From the late 1930s to Jo McCarthy’s reign of terror, Gore Vidal charts the seamy, sleazy side of Washington. Mixing sober history with nakedly Gothic melodrama, he provides an intoxicating cocktail of blackmail, betrayal, sexual ambivalence, lunacy and conspiracy - or, in a word, politics.

The novels are apparently all connected, but I’m not sure how essential it is to read them all, or to read them in order. The seventh book, THE GOLDEN AGE, does feature characters from WASHINGTON D.C. and HOLLYWOOD, though.

“House Blood” by Mike Lawson (Grove/Atlantic)

The latest Joe DeMarco thriller

Orson Mulray, CEO of Mulray Pharma, a cold and calculating man obsessed with profit and prestige. Mulray believes he has discovered a drug that could prevent a previously incurable disease. It could be the salvation of millions of people and make him billions of dollars. But the drug needs to be tested on human subjects and Mulray needs more than blood samples – he needs autopsy results.

Lizzie Warwick, a naive philanthropist who provides relief to third-world victims of wars and natural disasters, is the ideal tool. But then her D.C. lobbyist uncovers the plan, so Mulray has him killed and frames his partner, Brian Kincaid, for the murder.

Two years later, DeMarco is asked to look into the seemingly hopeless case but he has other things on his mind: his powerful boss, John Mahoney, has been ousted from his position as Speaker of the House; his girlfriend has left him; and his friend Emma may be dying. DeMarco has no expectation of freeing Kincaid – and he certainly doesn’t expect to become the target of two of the most ruthless killers he and Emma have ever encountered.

House Blood, the seventh novel in the Joe DeMarco series, is another great thriller from Lawson. Filled with political and international intrigue, and populated by three-dimensional and engaging characters, it fulfilled and even exceeded my expectations. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this novel.

“Supreme Justice” by Phillip Margolin (Harper)

Intrigue & Corruption at the Supreme Court

Sarah Woodruff, on death row in Oregon for murdering her lover, John Finley, has appealed her case to the Supreme Court just when a prominent justice resigns, leaving a vacancy.

Then, for no apparent reason, another justice is mysteriously attacked. Dana Cutler – one of the heroes from Margolin’s bestselling Executive Privilege – is quietly called in to investigate. She looks for links between the Woodruff appeal and the ominous incidents in the justices' chambers, which eventually lead her to a shoot-out that took place years ago on a small freighter docked upriver in Shelby, Oregon, containing a dead crew and illegal drugs. The only survivor on board? John Finley.

With the help of Brad Miller and Keith Evans, Dana uncovers a plot by a rogue element in the American intelligence community involving the president's nominee to the Supreme Court, and soon the trio is thrown back into the grips of a deadly, executive danger.

This is the second novel in Margolin’s Washington Trilogy (the first was Executive Privilege), and it continues the series in very fine form. The novel reunites us with Brad Miller and Dana Cutler – the former is now a clerk at the Supreme Court, while Dana continues to work as a private investigator and also some-time reporter for Exposed, the supermarket tabloid our protagonists turned to in their previous novel. Supreme Justice has a couple of great twists and red herrings, as well as political and courtroom intrigue. This is a pretty solid, entertaining and gripping political/legal thriller.

“The 500” by Matthew Quirk (Headline/Little Brown)

The darker side of Washington, DC, lobbying

Mike Ford was following his father into a life of crime, when he chose to go straight and instead worked his way through Harvard Law School. Now he’s landed the ultimate job with the Davies Group, a powerful political consulting firm run by the charismatic Henry Davies. Rubbing shoulders with Washington’s heavyweights and with more money and privileges than he’s ever imagined, Mike believes that everything has finally come right.

But he’s about to discover that power comes with a price. Henry Davies is looking for a protégé for a crucial deal and one that must go right no matter what. Mike soon learns that being on the side of the lawmakers doesn’t mean your work is legal. And there’s no place for a moral code when you’re on the devil’s payroll.

I stumbled across this book rather by accident, while hunting around for political thrillers. Luckily, it’s very good, so I’m very glad that I did. The novel takes a look at the seamier side of lobbying culture, adds in a dash of conspiracy theory, some international criminals, and plenty of action. It’s very enjoyable.

“Capital Crimes” by Stuart Woods (Signet/Penguin)

A ideologically-motivated serial killer in DC?

When a prominent conservative politician is killed inside his lakeside cabin, authorities have no suspect in sight. And two more seemingly different deaths might be linked to the same murderer. From a quiet D.C. suburb to the corridors of power to a deserted island hideaway in Maine, Will, his CIA director wife, Kate, and the FBI will track their man, set a trap-and await the most dangerous kind of quarry, a killer with a cause to die for...

This is the second novel in Stuart Woods’s Will Lee series that I’ve read, and I blitzed through it quicker than my first, The Run. It’s tightly plotted, engaging and extremely fast-paced. Despite not focusing on politics quite as much as I would have liked, this novel is very enjoyable, and I was hooked from the very beginning.

“House Divided” by Mike Lawson (Atlantic Press)

A Rogue General, Illegal Wire-Taps, and DeMarco’s in the Middle

With his boss out of commission, Joe DeMarco is on his own, a sacrificial pawn in a lethal game between a master spy and a four-star army general.

When the NSA was caught wiretapping U.S. citizens without warrants, a scandal erupted and the program came to a screeching halt. But the man who spearheaded the most sophisticated eavesdropping operation in history wasn’t about to sit by while his country sleepwalked into another 9/11. Instead, he moved the program into the shadows. So when the NSA records a rogue military group murdering two American civilians, they can’t exactly walk over to the Pentagon and demand to know what’s going on. That doesn’t mean their hands are tied, however. As the largest intelligence service in the country, both in money and manpower, they have plenty of options — mostly illegitimate.

DeMarco learns all too well just what the NSA is capable of, but he doesn’t like being used…

I’ve been a fan of Lawson’s DeMarco series ever since I read The Inside Ring. House Divided is the sixth book in the series, and it is quite possibly the best yet. Certainly a series that deserves far more attention than it receives.

“The Lost Symbol”, by Dan Brown (Random House)

Mr. Langdon goes to Washington

Much has been made of this novel’s release in the press, so allow me just a quick run-down of what this novel is actually about (which is usually forgotten amid all the hype):

Robert Langdon has been called to Washington, D.C., through a ruse put into place by our antagonist, “Mal’akh”. Mal’akh, the overly-tattooed evil mastermind of the piece, has recently managed to become inducted into the highest ranks of the Freemasons, as part of his quest to uncover a hidden mystery and the legendary power that comes with solving it. This secret is protected by the Masons, which explains his obsession with Peter Solomon – one of Langdon’s best friends and mentor. As Mal’akh manipulates Langdon through a series of twisted and convoluted clues throughout Washington D.C., his attention is also drawn to Katherine Solomon’s work in neotics. Eventually, Langdon and Katherine are thrown together to solve the puzzle, and hopefully prevent Mal’akh from achieving his goal. All the while, other factions vie for control of the secret, and Langdon finds himself, once again, put in situations no mild-mannered professor would ever actively seek out…

So, that’s the plot, but is The Lost Symbol any good? Brown has a tendency to polarise the reading public – be it through his questionable use of science and mythology (which, actually, isn’t much different to many other authors, but the Vatican took exception to Brown’s work), or his less-than-stellar gift for prose.

The Da Vinci Code was a fair book, with some good ideas let down by his rather sophomoric writing style (I couldn’t get into Angels & Demons, more due to my mood at the time than any failing on Brown’s behalf). What surprised me the most when it came to reading The Lost Symbol is that it’s both a good book and much better written. The author has managed to speed up his prose, improve the dialogue (there weren’t anywhere near as many clangers this time around), and write another interesting and engaging plot. In fact, this book did exactly what a novel in this genre should do – it manipulated mythology and science, mashing them together to make something new and interesting, it was populated by interesting characters that weren’t totally one-dimensional, and it held my attention.

There is, however, one considerable failing here. Brown seems to have a need to explain everything. Nothing can be left to the readers’ imaginations. Some might say this is because Brown had a particular vision that he wanted to re-create in our minds, which is all well and good when describing something Langdon has to study in order to solve a mystery or puzzle (which Brown does). But, for example, when Mal’akh is just striding through his home, and we’re told he’s walking through a corridor filled with expensive Italian art, why does Brown need to then list a number of obscure pieces of art that (chances are very high) most of his readers won’t know? It feels like showing off, somehow. And consistently referring to a character by his entire title is just annoying (“CIA field agent…” every time!). I can’t believe Brown was paid by the word, but reading this you could easily be forgiven for thinking that. A book that is meant to span only a few hours shouldn’t ever feel drawn-out.

Anyway, those are small niggles, that reduced the impact of the novel by making it far longer than it needed to be. By streamlining the content, pruning back the exposition, The Lost Symbol could well have been nearly perfect – and I wouldn’t have frequently thought “get on with it!” while reading.

Many people will roll their eyes at the prospect of anyone enjoying this novel. Many will outright refuse to even contemplate reading it. Some might read it, enjoy it, but not admit it to their friends and peers. These people are all missing out. Brown’s novels do exactly what they are supposed to do: entertain. The overdone and exaggerated reactions to Da Vinci Code are addressed in passing at the start of Lost Symbol, as Langdon comments on his surprise at the ferocious response to his work: “Scandal wasn’t my intention”, he tells a fan.

I enjoyed this novel, and if you have even a passing interest in novels that delve into science and mysticism, then The Lost Symbol will likely be right up your street.

Recommended.

Also try: Matthew Reilly, James Twining, James Rollins, Douglas Preston, Lincoln Child, Tom Grace