{"id":1559,"date":"2014-12-30T14:21:34","date_gmt":"2014-12-30T22:21:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=1559"},"modified":"2014-12-30T14:22:17","modified_gmt":"2014-12-30T22:22:17","slug":"mike-lawson-the-inside-ring","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/mike-lawson-the-inside-ring\/","title":{"rendered":"Mike Lawson: The Inside Ring"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"The<\/a>It\u2019s always been a puzzle to me why the talented Mike Lawson isn\u2019t a superstar, and his first book, The Inside Ring<\/em>, is so good it really begs the question. I\u2019m always in the mood for a thriller this time of year, and went to the Lawson part of the alphabet and grabbed this one on Christmas Eve. I\u2019ve read others in the series but never the first, and it joins my ongoing mental list of terrific first novels that hit every mark out of the gate.<\/p>\n

Lawson\u2019s series character, Joe DeMarco, is a \u201cfixer\u201d for the Speaker of the House and works very much under the radar. His office is even in the basement of the House of Representatives alongside the janitorial staff. Whenever the speaker \u2013 long-time pol Mahoney \u2013\u00a0needs a task done that can\u2019t see the light of day, it\u2019s DeMarco he puts into motion. This gives DeMarco a lot of power and not quite enough as his official title and credentials are slightly nebulous. Because of DeMarco\u2019s family background \u2013 his father was in the mob \u2013 he doesn\u2019t carry a gun and tries to avoid violence. It often finds him anyway, though.<\/p>\n

This novel begins with an assassination attempt on the President, who was on a weekend with his best friend, a well known writer. The writer is killed and the President is wounded. After a confession from the killer, things seem to be wrapped up, but the Secretary of Homeland Security isn\u2019t happy and Mahoney asks DeMarco to look into it. As DeMarco zeroes in on one of the Secret Service agents who were surrounding the President, his investigation takes off in all kinds of unexpected ways. I figured out only one twist of the story, but the final one is a doozy that truly surprised me.<\/p>\n

As a first novel, Lawson does introduce a couple characters who re-appear in the rest of the series, especially DeMarco\u2019s powerful, lethal buddy Emma, a beautiful woman who has connections seemingly everywhere. While much of this set up sounds off-the-charts absurd, Lawson tells his stories in such a matter of fact, nicely detailed way that it never seems over the top. DeMarco is very likable \u2013 you\u2019re rooting for him to get some furniture in his empty townhouse (his ex has taken everything) but even more, you\u2019re rooting for him to get the bad guy.<\/p>\n

Lawson utilizes all of my own \u201cthriller rules\u201d: he has a situation with interesting specifics (Washington DC, the secret service); he has a reliable main character, and he starts with a story where you as the reader know what happened but you don\u2019t know why. As with any good thriller, the \u201cwhy\u201d is the journey. Lawson\u2019s straightforward storytelling gets you there every time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s always been a puzzle to me why the talented Mike Lawson isn\u2019t a superstar, and his first book, The Inside Ring, is so good it really begs the question. I\u2019m always in the mood for a thriller this time of year, and went to the Lawson part of the alphabet and grabbed this one … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[22,13],"class_list":["post-1559","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-oldies-but-goodies","tag-suspensethriller"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1559","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1559"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1559\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1561,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1559\/revisions\/1561"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}