April 1, 2021
This fifteenth Joe DeMarco thriller (after House Privilege, 2020) incorporates real-life events that played out on national television. Joe, troubleshooter for the speaker of the House, is investigating who leaked a story to Anderson Cooper when he reads of the death of a former love interest, novelist Shannon Doyle, shot at a seedy motel in middle-of-nowhere Wyoming. He learns that a Bureau of Land Management agent was murdered nearby while she was researching the "cowboy persona." Enter rancher Hiram Bunt, a megalomaniac engaged in a decades-long battle with the feds over the use of Wyoming's public grazing lands, and who has the local officials intimidated and the citizenry terrified. Working through Shannon's journal, Joe walks a dangerous path to find her killer. Lawson's writing is as authentic, as cynically amusing, and as compelling as always. He is so adept at capturing political menace that the reader will be left hoping that his next book will revolve around the congressional siege of January 6, with Joe front and center.
COPYRIGHT(2021) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.