Consummate D.C. insider Joe DeMarco high-tails it to Wyoming in the hope of solving the murder of a successful author who just happens to have been his ex-lover.Speaker of the House John Fitzpatrick Mahoney wants his unofficial bagman and fixer to track down the person who leaked news to CNN about Mahoney's secret meeting with two telecom CEOs looking for a merger. But DeMarco, overwhelmed by the news of Shannon Doyle's fatal shooting, travels to the town of Waverly, Wyoming, instead. There, he learns that everybody just loved Shannon, who was on an extended visit to gather material for her second novel, but that a few people might have had it in for her anyway. Shannon's discovery, duly recorded in the copious journal DeMarco gets access to by his usual roundabout ways, of the romance between FBI–defying rancher Hiram Bunt's much younger wife, Lisa, and Jim Turner, the Sweetwater County deputy heading the investigation into Bunt, might have put her in the sights of Turner; his wife, Carly; or Lisa Bunt, who can't afford to throw away the 10 years she's invested in her cash cow of a marriage. And motel manager Sam Clarke's daughter, Lola, a drug-addicted cleaner who almost certainly stole Shannon's diamond earrings, might have killed her just to swipe her missing laptop as well. Despite DeMarco's continuing disdain for the niceties of the law, he's a lot less interesting as a sleuth than as a fixer, and the solution, which he doesn't even uncover, will have many fans of this entertaining series demanding their money back.The most conventional and least satisfying of the antihero's recent adventures. Bring back Beltway corruption.

Edgar finalist Lawson-s tepid 15th Joe DeMarco thriller (after 2020-s House Privilege) finds Joe sitting at home in Washington, D.C., where he reads a newspaper article recounting the shooting death of former love interest Shannon Doyle in a motel in Waverly, Wyo. The police theory-that she was killed by a trucker who robbed her-strikes Joe as weak. Abandoning his regular job as a fixer for Speaker of the House John Fitzpatrick Mahoney, Joe flies to Wyoming to track down Shannon-s killer. Waverly is a typical small western community, where the citizens immediately distrust anyone from out of town, particularly if the out-of-towner is from Washington. The many suspects include an anti-government rancher, the deputy sheriff investigating the murder, and a motel maid. This makes for a lot of investigating by DeMarco, who questions various locals who point him in the right and sometimes wrong directions. The baggy structure has lots of annoying point-of-view shifts, Speaker Mahoney and DeMarco-s usual D.C. friends play only minor roles, and the whodunit reveal fizzles. Lawson-s many fans will hope for a return to form next time. Agent: David Gernert, Gernert Company. (Apr.)