Shining City

November 14, 2016
Senior Brookings Institute fellow Rosenstiel (The Elements of Journalism, with Bill Kovach) makes his fiction debut with this polished, entertaining political thriller. President James Nash hires Washington, D.C., spin doctors Peter Rina and Randi Brooks to “scrub” potential Supreme Court nominee Roland Madison. Their researches reveal a 1960s radical taint in Judge Madison’s background, providing red meat for challenges from Nash’s opponents—in particular, the founder of the ultra-right-wing group Citizens for Freedom. But a more alarming problem arises when the murdered bodies of Madison’s colleagues start turning up. Rina and Brooks must now expand their investigation to hunt for a serial killer. The conservative Rina and the liberal Brooks are an engaging team, and Rosenstiel does a brilliant job dramatizing how Washington’s political sausage is made. Less convincing is the plot’s serial-killer element, which feels as if one of John Sandford’s psychopaths has wandered into Primary Colors. Still, readers will want to see a lot more of Rina and Brooks. Agent: David Black, Black Agency.

December 1, 2016
Investigating the background of a Supreme Court nominee, a problem-solver for hire falls into the path of a killer.The author of several nonfiction books and a former reporter for Newsweek and the Los Angeles Times, Rosenstiel makes his fiction debut with an uncertain blend of Washington-insider novel and thriller. What may be a series launch doesn't yet click. Rosenstiel crafts a hero, Peter Rena, who has many soul mates in this genre. Rena has a troubled past. After West Point, he ran into trouble in the Army. He's divorced, and he's got the tough-guy vernacular down pat. Of a congressman caught misusing funds, Rena says, "Someone found a loose string about Derek Knox and pulled." Now a behind-the-scenes problem-solver to the powerful in Washington, D.C., Rena, says a friend, is "the guy who comes in when PR won't work." Rena works with Randi Brooks, his complement: she's a liberal Democrat, he's mostly a Republican. President James Nash summons the partners to the White House. A conservative Democrat faced with a dysfunctional Congress (one of many topical aspects here), Nash wants Rena and Brooks and their staff to dig into the background of his nominee to the Supreme Court, Edmund Roland Madison, who, Brooks says, will be "nothing but trouble." An iconoclast who disdains compromise, Madison is conservative on gun control yet liberal on free speech, race, and discrimination. Brooks and Rena's investigation and their interviews with quirky Madison are slowly paced and, for readers who follow the machinations over court appointments in the press, too familiar and predictable. To ramp up suspense, Rosenstiel cuts periodically to an overused thriller trope--a lurking killer carrying out a series of brutal murders, graphically described. Eventually the assailant goes after Madison, bringing focus, momentum, and a fair degree of suspense to the proceedings. Sure to steady the pulse.

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Starred review from October 15, 2016

Keep your friends close but your political enemies closer. Peter Rena and his partner, Randi Brooks, are "fixers" who are known for being extremely effective in making problems go away. That's difficult in Washington, DC, where the struggle for political power is ruthless. When a Supreme Court justice dies suddenly, Rena and Brooks are hired by the president to vet his replacement nominee. Judge Roland Madison is a political maverick, which makes the proceedings even more difficult for everyone. The nomination process then takes a deadly turn when Rena uncovers a series of seemingly random killings that might be connected to Madison. Could Madison also be a target? Rena and Brooks must race to figure out who is behind the murders as they try to protect the president from any political fallout and save Madison's life. VERDICT Veteran journalist Rosenstiel's debut novel "shines" with page-turning intensity that will make readers hope that this book is the beginning of a new series. Highly recommended for legal and political thriller junkies and fans of David Baldacci and John Grisham. [See Prepub Alert, 8/26/16.]--Susan Moritz, Silver Spring, MD

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 1, 2016
Rosenstiel is out to write a roof-rattling thriller, and he's brought it off in doubles. Peter Rena is a Washington, D.C., operator whose special skill is making problems disappear. This time his client is the president of the U.S., no less, and the problem is the background of the chief executive's potential Supreme Court nominee. Could he be too radical? He did, after all, protest the Vietnam War. As Rena digs into the past of this man, who looks like a wholesome Peter O'Toole, a serial killer goes to work, and we discover, as Rena does, that everything is connected. What's really fun here is watching old-hand Washington observer Rosenstiel drop insights about the Kabuki world of the nation's capital. A restaurant hostess doesn't take drink ordersit's a status thing. To keep an interview subject ignorant of your agenda, make him mad at you. The thriller plot returns, hammer and tongs, for a fine action finale, but what we remember most is characters like the vice president. He's taken on a gaunt look from attending too many funerals. Give this one to fans of the late, great Ross Thomas.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)