Available:*
Library | Call Number | Status |
|---|---|---|
Searching... Hardwood Creek Library (Forest Lake) | FICTION LAW | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Park Grove Library (Cottage Grove) | FICTION LAW | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... R.H. Stafford Library (Woodbury) | FICTION LAW | Searching... Unknown |
Bound With These Titles
On Order
Summary
Summary
In House Witness , the twelfth novel in the Joe DeMarco series, Mike Lawson puts his likable protagonist on the trail of a different kind of fixer--one whose job is to influence, and sometimes disappear, witnesses in seemingly airtight criminal cases.
Minority Leader of the House and DeMarco's long-time employer John Mahoney has kept more than one secret from his wife over the years, but none so explosive as this: He has a son, and that son has just been shot dead in a bar in Manhattan. Mahoney immediately dispatches DeMarco to New York to assist prosecutor Justine Porter, but with five bystanders willing to testify against the killer--rich-boy Toby Rosenthal--the case seems like a slam-dunk. That is, until Porter begins to suspect that someone is interfering with those witnesses, and that this may be connected to a pattern of cases across the country. Is there someone who is getting witnesses out of the way when the fate of a wealthy defendant is on the line?
With the help of Porter's intern, as outrageously smart as she is young, DeMarco becomes determined to follow that question through to its violent resolution in what turns out to be this series' most unexpected plot yet.
Author Notes
Mike Lawson is a former senior civilian executive for the U.S. Navy. He is the author of eleven previous novels starring Joe DeMarco and three novels with his protagonist Kay Hamilton.
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
At the start of Lawson's winning 12th Joe DeMarco thriller (after 2016's House Revenge), John Mahoney, the minority leader of the House of Representatives, learns that his son has been killed. Still worse, his wife, Mary Pat, doesn't know he had one. Dominic, who's the result of Mahoney's affair many years before with Connie DiNunzio, an aide to a New York congressman, has been killed in a New York City bar by Toby Rosenthal, a rich man's son who is probably going to try to buy his way out of a conviction. Connie wants vengeance. Mahoney assigns DeMarco, his fixer, the job of making sure Toby goes to jail. Each of the five eyewitnesses to the shooting can identify Toby as the killer, and each becomes the target of a con woman, Ella Fields, whose specialty is witness tampering. Readers will enjoy watching the case unravel and how DeMarco goes about making things right. The action builds to a satisfying resolution, but an open ending promises more troubles for DeMarco down the line. Agent: David Gernert, Gernert Company. (Feb.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* A married accountant with three children is murdered in a Manhattan bar. The accountant is the son of House Minority Leader John Mahoney, but Mahoney has kept that little fact secret from his wife. Five witnesses identify the shooter, the feckless son of a wealthy Manhattan corporate attorney. The case should be open and shut, but the savvy ADA who will try it has heard from other prosecutors about how very rich perps have skated because eyewitnesses disappeared or changed their testimony. Mahoney's fixer, Joe DeMarco, becomes a reluctant, temporary special investigator for the Manhattan DA's office, and he begins to search nationwide for the shadowy people who arrange for the very wealthy to purchase exoneration. Each of Lawson's DeMarco novels have been first-rate, but House Witness may be the best yet. DeMarco's investigation and the machinations of the witness tamperers are skillfully detailed and thoroughly involving, but the love affair between two of the criminals is an unexpected bonus. Readers will once again find themselves comparing Lawson to the late, great Ross Thomas.--Gaughan, Thomas Copyright 2017 Booklist
Kirkus Review
Veteran fixer Joe DeMarco, who's never met a problem he couldn't solve by hook or by crook, goes up against a criminal as canny and resourceful as he is.Five eyewitnesses see Toby Rosenthal run from McGill's bar after he shoots accountant Dominic DiNunzio to death following a brief, apparently routine altercation. The case against Toby would be open and shut if his boss and father, Henry, weren't an immensely wealthy and well-connected lawyer. David Slade, the criminal defense attorney Henry hires to defend his son, sees only one path to acquittal: contacting a self-described jury consultant he's heard about who goes to exceptionally active lengths to alter the facts on the ground. When Henry agrees, Slade unleashes his dark, expensive ally, who promptly goes to work bribing, blackmailing, and murdering those five witnesses. Luckily for the forces of justiceif Lawson believes in such a thingDiNunzio was the unacknowledged offspring of House Minority Leader John Mahoney, who, having never met his son in life, is determined to avenge him in death. So Mahoney unleashes his own not-so-secret weapon, Joe DeMarco (House Rivals, 2015, etc.), who begins by assuming that his services won't be needed but then realizes that those five witnesses are endangered species who'll vanish from the Earth if he can't figure out who's marked them to be neutralized. The resulting game of cat and catDeMarco scrambles to identify and defang that jury consultant before the defense succeeds in discrediting or disposing of all the witnesses and providing an innocent alternative defendant to bootis irresistible.Eminently predictable in its larger contoursbut the devil is in the details, and Lawson's details are unfailingly devilish, right down to the very last twist. A perfect candidate for in-flight entertainment for readers confident that their seatmates can't possibly be carrying. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Excerpts
Excerpts
What Toby did was walk out to his car, which was parked directly in front of McGill's. That was the only luck he'd had in the last three days: finding that parking spot. He jerked open the passenger-side door, opened the glove compartment, and pulled out the gun--a Smith & Wesson .357 revolver with a walnut grip and a three-inch barrel. He slammed the car door shut and walked back into McGill's--and immediately saw the whale at a table, sitting by himself, still wearing his trench coat and his stupid hat. Toby walked over to him and, without hesitating, shot him three times. "That'll teach you to fuck with me," he muttered. It was as if the sound of the gunshots woke him from a nightmare, and he suddenly realized what he'd done. He stood for no more than a second looking at the fat man--his white shirt was turning crimson--then he ran. He almost hit a busboy carrying a tray of glasses before he got to the door, banged it open, jumped into his car, and took off. He was driving away less than a minute after he killed Dominic DiNunzio. As he was driving he kept saying, "What did you do? What did you do?" The short-barreled .357 was on the passenger seat, but it was no longer an inanimate object. To Toby it was alive, like a malignant machine in a Stephen King novel, giving off heat, possessing a dark, throbbing heart. Excerpted from House Witness by Mike Lawson All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
