House Privilege

Starred review from March 9, 2020
In Lawson’s excellent 12th Joe DeMarco thriller (after 2019’s House Arrest), Congressman John Fitzpatrick Mahoney, who lost his position as speaker of the House eight years earlier, is poised to take back his former job, but he has a problem. His good friend billionaire Connor Russell has died with his wife in a plane crash, leaving their 15-year-old daughter, Cassie, an orphan. As Mahoney’s goddaughter, she’s now his legal responsibility. Mahoney sends DeMarco, his personal fixer, to Boston to check on the girl. In Boston, Joe meets with lawyer Erin Kelly, the manager of the Russell trust fund, who suggests that Mahoney transfer his guardianship of Cassie to her. Meanwhile, DeMarco needs to take care of a blackmailer who’s squeezing Mahoney. The blackmailer claims he has evidence of an affair Mahoney had 15 years earlier. No surprise, the resourceful Demarco finds ingenious ways to solve all the problems. The author’s felicitous style will keep readers smiling throughout. Lawson remains at the top of his game. Agent: David Gernert, Gernert Company.

Starred review from May 1, 2020
Smooth operator is a flexible idiom that can mean a charming person who manipulates others easily with a gracious skill set, or it can mean a clever scoundrel. Joe DeMarco, a fixer for a corrupt congressman, can assume either persona on an ad hoc basis. Armed only with a sprinkled doughnut and a good cup of coffee, he can convince a blackmailer to give it up, and he will not hesitate to deceive or drug dangerous criminals into submission. In this fourteenth entry in the series (after House Arrest, 2019), the action moves out of DC, its customary location, and finds DeMarco in the wintry Northeast after a plane crash leaves a wealthy 15-year-old girl, the goddaughter of the Speaker of the House, as the sole survivor. Dealing with Cassie Russell is truly undiscovered country for DeMarco, as is the remote Adirondack location of the accident, which proves to be sabotage. DeMarco learns that the family lawyer has been embezzling from the Russell trust and is now covering her tracks with the assistance of her crime-boss uncle. As always, justice is done, legalities be damned, and off goes DeMarco for a long-overdue game of golf in sunny Florida. This is a consistently entertaining, well-crafted series. The real mystery here is why Lawson has yet to garner a major award.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)