In the thirteenth book in Mike Lawson’s celebrated series, Joe DeMarco finds himself on the wrong side of an investigation—in the wake of a political assassination, he’s been framed as the killer.
As the fixer for Congressman John Mahoney in Washington, D.C., Joe DeMarco has had to bend and break the law more than a few times. But when Representative Lyle Canton, House Majority Whip, is found shot dead in his office in the U.S. Capitol and DeMarco is arrested for the murder, DeMarco knows he’s been framed. Locked up in the Alexandria Jail awaiting trial, he calls on his enigmatic friend Emma, an ex-DIA agent, to search for the true killer.
Emma’s investigation leads her to Sebastian Spear, the ruthless and competitive CEO of the multi-billion-dollar Spear Industries. Spear had a motive for killing Lyle Canton: Canton’s wife, Jean, had once been Spear’s high school sweetheart and the one true love of his life—until Canton won her over. Now Jean was dead, killed in a car crash while driving drunk, and Spear blamed Canton for the accident. But the case the F.B.I. has built against DeMarco is airtight, and not a single piece of evidence points to the grieving CEO. Using her cunning and her D.C. connections, Emma sets out to prove that Spear has been using some fixers of his own.
Featuring crimes of passion, corporate corruption, and partisan feuds, House Arrest is a gripping, timely political thriller, and one of Lawson’s best books yet.
BOOK REVIEW
This book was utterly amazing. What took me so long to read a Joe DeMarco thriller! Yes I know, I jumped in at book #13, but it still was amazing. Mike Lawson stands out among the crowded field of thriller writers. His brand of storytelling puts you right into the heart of D.C. political intrigue, corruption, and backdoor maneuvering. This time Joe DeMarco, the fixer for Congressman John Mahoney is completely vulnerable when he’s framed for the murder of U.S. Representative Lyle Canton. The way this book unravels is just a masterpiece. There’s good writing, and then there’s great storytelling that goes above and beyond your expectations. You get hopelessly lost into the story. Exceptional! I’m moving on to Joe DeMarco book #14, House Privilege.
Michael Lawson was raised in Pueblo, Colorado and attended college at Seattle University, receiving a degree in engineering. On leaving college he went to work for the US Navy as a nuclear engineer, spending approximately thirty years working for the Navy’s nuclear power program. Some of this time was spent in Washington D.C. but most was spent at a large naval shipyard in Bremerton, Washington.
At the shipyard he managed a number of different organizations related to overhauling nuclear powered submarines, cruisers, and aircraft carriers, ending up as a member of the government’s Senior Executive Service
To date he has published 12 books starring Joe DeMarco, a fixer for a corrupt politician and three books in his Kay Hamilton series under the name of M. A. Lawson: He has won the Friend of Mystery Award twice and is a five time nominee for the Barry Award.
Plastic surgeon Lou Edwards’s life is complicated by two major issues.
One, his wife has lupus, possibly due to leaking silicone from breast implants Edwards himself inserted. And two, his malpractice insurance has been canceled, as it has been for many other plastic surgeons, due to the burgeoning breast implant problem.
But it gets worse.
Shortly after Edwards threatens an insurance company president on national TV, the president is found murdered in his penthouse.
Dr. Jim Bob Brady once again finds himself doing a bit of investigating, this time on behalf of a colleague. But how well does he know this colleague? Is the investigation worth the threat to Jim Bob’s own life? Will he discover that it was a burglary gone bad? A lover’s quarrel? Or is this an act of revenge?
I was stunned but not unconscious. My first concern was that I had sustained another head injury. I had been mugged a year and a half ago and had spent ten days in a coma after developing a subdural hematoma, a collection of blood between my brain and skull requiring surgery. The hair on my shaved head had taken seemingly forever to grow back out to a length and texture I could brush. I wasn’t prepared to go through all that again.
“I’m okay, I think,” I said to Mary Louise. She was kneeling down over me, skis off. “Thanks for not being in front of me. I might have hit you, too. Where’s the guy I ran into?”
“He’s up the hill. I’ll go check on him.” And with that, she headed back up the slope.
Since I had landed face down in the snow, I used my corduroy cap to clean off my goggles and face in an attempt to see what was going on. I was partially buried in the foot-high drift, but when I assessed that my extremities were intact and my vision was relatively normal, I managed to turn myself around.
I sat up and saw my wife kneeling down over the man I had run into twenty yards behind me. One ski was off, and the other was twisted about 45 degrees, half-buried in the snow. Unfortunately, his leg was still attached to it. My skis had come undone, and God only knew where they had landed. Probably in someone’s condo.
I had heard of a ski accident that occurred on the same slope wherein a crash between two skiers had resulted in a lost ski sailing down the hill and crashing through a picture window into the living room of a residence. No one was hurt, at least in the home, but I’m sure it gave them quite a start. And some decent kindling.
I abandoned my ski poles, which had still been attached to my wrists with their adjustable loops, and stepped up the hill to join Mary Louise and the unknown assailant. A thought crossed my mind that perhaps I was the unknown assailant. Whatever the situation, I hoped the man had experienced enough of a shock to render him an amnesiac but not unconscious or damaged.
“Are you okay?” Mary Louise was asking him repeatedly as I arrived on the scene. Several other skiers had gathered as well and had already placed their skis in the ground, tips up and crossed, the universal sign of an injury requiring the ski patrol’s attention.
The man was on his side. His eyes were open.
“Listen,” I said, “I’m a doctor. I need to check your pupils and your arms and legs. Don’t be frightened. Okay?”
He nodded.
His pupils reacted normally to light. I felt his neck.
“Any pain here?” I asked as I gently moved his cervical spine from side to side. “Any numbness? Arms or legs?”
He shook his head. “My leg . . . killing me.”
“I’m sure. I’ll get down there in a minute.”
The man’s arms, chest, head, spine, and right leg all seemed to be in working order. It was time to address the crucial issue.
“Listen,” I explained, “my name is Jim Brady. I’m an orthopedic surgeon from Houston. I need to check out this left leg and try to decide if you’ve got a fracture in your femur or tibia or if you’ve got a knee ligament injury. I may not be able to tell, but I’d like to try before the ski patrol arrives.Okay?”
“I don’t want you to move it. Hurts too bad.”
“Well, the medic will have to move it to get you onto the stretcher. Your leg’s kind of twisted out at an angle. If I can figure out what’s wrong, I may be able to make you more comfortable by moving it. Let me try.”
He nodded. I gently felt his femur, the thigh bone, with both hands. No pain. Same with the tibia and fibula, the two bones connecting the knee to the ankle. When I felt his knee, however, even through his bulky, waterproof ski pants, I could feel the enlarged joint. He winced.
“It’s your knee, probably a ligament tear. If I can get your ski off andstraighten out the leg, you’ll feel a lot better. I want you to hang on for a minute.”
“Man, it’s killing me! Just leave it alone!”
I paused, then slid down toward his boot release, had Mary Louise support the ski to minimize the torque, and unsnapped his boot from the binding. He moaned for a second, but I quickly untwisted the leg, brought it parallel to the other, and laid it down.
“Damn it! I told you not to—huh. Feels better.”
“See,” I said, “you should have trusted me.”
“Sort of hard to trust a guy who runs you over, wouldn’t you say?”
I assumed amnesia wasn’t going to be a problem for him.
Two members of the ski patrol arrived on separate snowmobiles pulling stretchers. One of them had probably been intended for me. I was glad to decline it. I helped the medics get my victim onto the stretcher and bind him down to minimize the shock of the journey to Snowmass Ski Clinic. I felt obligated to accompany them.
“Are you by yourself? Is there anyone we can notify?” Mary Louise asked. “I’ll be glad to make a call. Whatever you need.”
“Guess you better call my wife, tell her I’m hurt. I hate to upset her,though.”
“Where are you staying?” she asked him.
“Wood Run Condos. Just down the hill. I was headed home.”
“So were we,” Mary Louise said. “Why don’t I just run by there. We’re at the Chamonix. You’re only a block or so away. How would that be?”
He nodded and sort of smiled. “That’d be real nice, ma’am. I’d appreciate
that.”
She looked at him for a minute, waiting. “I need your name and condo number,” she said patiently, like a schoolteacher waiting for a third grader to figure out the times tables.
“Oh, sure. Sorry. I’m Lou Edwards. Her name’s Mimi. We’re in 530 Wood Run. And thanks.”
“It’s the least I can do,” Mary Louise said, looking at me like she was very glad I was okay, but not happy that I had run over the poor man. I didn’t blame her.
About the Author:
John Bishop MD is the author of Act of Revenge: A Doc Brady Mystery. Dr. Bishop has practiced orthopedic surgery in Houston, Texas, for 30 years. His Doc Brady medical thriller series is set in the changing environment of medicine in the 1990s. Drawing on his years of experience as a practicing surgeon, Bishop entertains readers using his unique insights into the medical world with all its challenges, intricacies, and complexities, while at the same time revealing the compassion and dedication of health care professionals. Dr. Bishop and his wife, Joan, reside in the Texas Hill Country. For more information, please visit:
In ASSASSIN’S CODE, the fourth book in New York Times bestselling author Jonathan Maberry’s Joe Ledger series, Joe Ledger and the DMS go on a relentless chase to stop an ancient order of killers from plunging the entire world into Holy War.
When Joe Ledger and Echo Team rescue a group of American college kids held hostage in Iran,the Iranian government then asks them to help find six nuclear bombs planted in the Mideast oil fields. These stolen WMDs will lead Joe and Echo Team into hidden vaults of forbidden knowledge, mass-murder, betrayal, and a brotherhood of genetically-engineered killers with a thirst for blood.
Accompanied by the beautiful assassin called Violin, Joe follows a series of clues to find the Book of Shadows, which contains a horrifying truth that threatens to shatter his entire worldview.
They say the truth will set you free… Not this time.
The secrets of the Assassin’s Code will set the world ablaze.
An ancient holy war. A hostage rescue in Iran. Vampires with weapons of mass destruction. Genetically engineered assassin’s. An undeciphered age old text with all the answers. Sound pretty wacky? You bet! Unless you’re Jonathan Maberry. It sounds really off the wall, but once the story unravels it’s not only plausible, IT’S COMPELLING. You combine Maberry’s writing style and add narrator Ray Porter into the mix….and you have a masterpiece! An absolute masterpiece. Captain Joe Ledger and the Echo Team from the Department of Military Sciences (DMS) are one of my favorites!! There’s simply nothing else like it.
ABSOLUTE MASTERPIECE.
JONATHAN MABERRY is a New York Times best-selling and five-time Bram Stoker Award-winning author, anthology editor, comic book writer, magazine feature writer, playwright, content creator and writing teacher/lecturer. He was named one of the Today’s Top Ten Horror Writers. His books have been sold to more than two-dozen countries.
He writes in several genres. His young adult fiction includes ROT & RUIN (2011; was named in Booklist’s Ten Best Horror Novels for Young Adults, an American Library Association Top Pick, a Bram Stoker and Pennsylvania Keystone to Reading winner; winner of several state Teen Book Awards including the Cricket, Nutmeg and MASL; winner of the Cybils Award, the Eva Perry Mock Printz medal, Dead Letter Best Novel Award, and four Melinda Awards); DUST & DECAY (winner of the 2011 Bram Stoker Award; FLESH & BONE (winner of the Bram Stoker Award; 2012; and FIRE & ASH (August 2013). BROKEN LANDS, the first of a new spin-off series, debuts in 2018.
His thrillers include The Joe Ledger Thrillers from St. Martin’s Griffin (PATIENT ZERO, 2009, winner of the Black Quill and a Bram Stoker Award finalist for Best Novel; EXTINCTION MACHINE, (2013; now in development for TV by SONY); PREDATOR ONE, and others. His first middle grade novel, THE NIGHTSIDERS BOOK 1: THE ORPHAN ARMY, was named one the 100 Best Books for Children 2015, with a sequel, VAULT OF SHADOWS debuting this year from Simon & Schuster. His standalone teen science fiction novel, MARS ONE, is in development for film by Zucker Productions and Lone Tree Entertainment. His upcoming standalone suspense novel, GLIMPSE, has gotten advance praise from Clive Barker, Scott Smith, James Rollins, Heather Graham and Charlaine Harris.
Vintage Crimes will be a CWA anthology with a difference, celebrating members’ work over the years. The book will gather stories from the mid-1950s until the twenty-first century by great names of the past, great names of the present together with a few hidden treasures by less familiar writers. The first CWA anthology, Butcher’s Dozen, appeared in 1956, and was co-edited by Julian Symons, Michael Gilbert, and Josephine Bell. The anthology has been edited by Martin Edwards since 1996, and has yielded many award-winning and nominated stories in the UK and overseas.
★ Martin Edwards – chair of the CWA and Edgar, Agatha,
Macavity, and Poirot award-winning author ★ Dea Parkin – secretary of the CWA & editorial consultant
★ Kate Ellis-Bullock – author & Vintage Crime contributor
★ Andrew Taylor – Diamond Dagger award-winning author &
Vintage Crime contributor
About the Event
Flame Tree Live: CWA and Vintage Crime. A special online panel to launch the new collection, Vintage Crime, and engage in a lively discussion about crime writing, writers, stories and themes. Topics will range from “Working in Isolation – that’s what writers do!”, “Good stories never die, even in crime fiction”, “Stories from the past that resonate today” and “How does the CWA encourage new writers?” Selected questions from readers and fans will also be featured.
About the Panelists
MARTIN EDWARDS is the previous past Chair of the CWA, now the Archivist, He has won the Edgar, Agatha, Macavity, and Poirot awards in the USA, and the CWA Short Story Dagger, CWA Margery Allingham Prize, and the H.R.F. Keating award in the UK. He is the author of eighteen novels, including the Lake District Mysteries, and the Harry Devlin series, as well as the ground-breaking genre study The Golden Age of Murder. He has edited twenty eight crime anthologies, has won the CWA Short Story Dagger and the CWA Margery Allingham Prize, and is series consultant for the British Library’s Crime Classics.
DEA PARKIN, a writer and a poet, has been Secretary of the CWA since 2016. She owns and manages Fiction Feedback, an editorial consultancy service that provides constructive critiques on novels and short stories from professional editors, authors, writing specialists and literary agents.
KATE ELLIS’ first novel, The Merchant House, launched the long-running DI Wesley Peterson series set in Devon. She has also written five crime novels featuring another cop, Joe Plantagenet, set in a fictionalised version of York, and a trilogy set in the immediate aftermath of the First World War, as well as many short stories. She won the CWA Dagger in the Library in 2019. The Devil’s Priest is a stand-alone historical mystery set in Liverpool.
ANDREW TAYLOR’s crime novels include a series about William Dougal, starting with Caroline Miniscule, which won the John Creasey Memorial Dagger, the Roth Trilogy, which was televised as Fallen Angel, the Lydmouth series, stand-alone novels such as The American Boy, and much else besides. He has won the Historical Dagger three times and in 2009 won the Diamond Dagger, as well as earning awards in Sweden and the US.
About Vintage Crime and CWA
VINTAGE CRIME [ISBN 978-1-78758-548-5, released August 11, 2020 in hardcover, paperback and ebook editions] is a CWA anthology with a difference, celebrating members’ work over the years. Gathering stories from the mid-1950s until the twenty-first century with great names of the past and present, together with a few hidden treasures by less familiar writers. The aim is to present a wide range of stories which are entertaining in their own right and also demonstrate the evolution of the crime short story during the CWA’s existence, from the Fifties until the early twenty-first century
The first CWA anthology, Butcher’s Dozen, appeared in 1956, and was co-edited by Julian Symons, Michael Gilbert, and Josephine Bell. The anthology has been edited by Martin Edwards since 1996, and has yielded many award-winning and nominated stories in the UK and overseas. This new edition includes an array of incredible and award-winning authors including Robert Barnard, Simon Brett, Liza Cody, Mat Coward, John Dickson Carr, Marjorie Eccles, Martin Edwards, Kate Ellis, Anthea Fraser, Celia Fremlin, Frances Fyfield, Michael Gilbert, Paula Gosling, Lesley Grant-Adamson, HRF Keating, Bill Knox, Peter Lovesey, Mick Herron, Michael Z. Lewin, Susan Moody, Julian Symons and Andrew Taylor.
The CWA was founded in 1953 by John Creasey – that’s over sixty-five years of support, promotion and celebration of this most durable, adaptable and successful of genres. The CWA runs the prestigious Dagger Awards, which celebrate the best in crime writing, and is proud to be a thriving, growing community with a membership encompassing authors at all stages of their careers. It is UK-based, yet attracts many members from across the world.
About Flame Tree Press
FLAME TREE PRESS is the original fiction imprint of Flame Tree Publishing (est. 1992). Led by the Flame Tree publisher Nick Wells in London and executive editor Don D’Auria in NYC, Flame Tree Press was launched in 2018 with the goal of bringing together new authors and the more established; the award winners, and exciting, original voices in horror, suspense, science fiction & fantasy, as well as crime, mystery, and thriller fiction. Learn more about Flame Tree Press at http://www.flametreepress.comand connect on social media @FlameTreePress
REVIEW COPIES of VINTAGE CRIME & INTERVIEWS AVAILABLE UPON REQUEST
A threat inside the government. A whistleblower’s life on the line. It’s up to Jon Reznick to bring justice.
When hacker Trevelle Williams discovers documents that threaten national security and put his life in jeopardy, there’s only one person he can turn to—Jon Reznick. Williams has learned that Rosalind Dyer, a key congressional witness, is about to be killed in order to stop her testimony. She has stumbled into the middle of a cover-up that goes deep into the United States government. Dyer knows her days are numbered, but that won’t stop her from doing what she has to do.
Trevelle Williams has helped Jon out of many a scrape in the past. Now, Jon is the only person he can turn to for help saving Rosalind’s life, as well as his own, and protecting national security in the process.
With enemies on all sides, including within the United States government, can Jon and Trevelle get to Rosalind in time? They’re her only hope to escape her pursuers and bring these secrets to light.
I love this series and Hard Target is the best one yet. Can’t recommend it enough. What a blazing page turner! Full of action, tension, conflict; and dilemmas, OH DILEMMAS galore. That’s the normal world for ex-special forces hard nose Jon Reznick. Usually it’s Jon, that enlists the help of ex-NSA hacker specialist Trevelle Williams; but the tables are turned in this one. Now it’s Trevelle, who needs immediate protection from some very powerful people. Like, Pentagon type big-wigs with resources at their disposal. One hallmark with J.B. Turner books is the always the ticking clock. That, with the pacing, running for your life narrative makes his books dynamic thrillers. Don’t miss this one!
J.B. Turner – a former journalist – is an Amazon #1 bestselling thriller writer. He is best known for the Jon Reznick® series. His latest book, HARD TARGET (Thomas & Mercer), was published on 21 May 2020.
His influences and favorite authors include: Lee Child, Richard Stark, Hunter S. Thompson, James Ellroy, James Lee Burke, George Orwell, Jack Kerouac, Henry James, Harlan Coben, Thomas H. Cook, John Grisham, James Patterson, John Buchan, and Michael Connelly. He wrote the American Ghost® series of action thrillers. The series features protagonist Nathan Stone, a former CIA covert operative who had been critically wounded, and everyone thought was dead. But behind closed doors, he was rehabilitated by a highly secretive government organization known as the Commission, given a new identity and appearance, and remoulded into a lethal assassin. His brief: to execute kill orders drawn up by the Commission, all in the name of national security. The Commission owns him, but Stone knows one wrong move could turn him from loyal asset to hunted man. He also wrote the Jon Reznick novella, Gone Bad (No Way Back Press), and the Deborah Jones® crime thrillers, Miami Requiem (No Way Back Press) and Dark Waters (No Way Back Press). His books have conspiratorial elements and themes throughout them. His work can often be described as thrillers; his books cover sub-genre categories including assassination thriller, suspense thriller, political thriller, crime fiction, military thriller, and, in the case of the Deborah Jones books, mysteries.
He has a keen interest in geo-politics. He loves music. He occasionally blogs. He listens to everything from Beethoven to The Beatles, The Cure to Bach. And everything in between. Occasionally writes. Loves films. Well, good ones. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Heat, The Godfather, The Offence, The French Connection, Payback, It’s a Wonderful Life, Manhattan, Annie Hall, Hell or High Water, Sideways, The Fighter, Ladybird, As Good As It Gets, Wonder Boys, The Deer Hunter, All the President’s Men, Joker, Babette’s Feast, and a personal fave, Animal House (what’s not to like?).
He lives in Edinburgh, Scotland. He is married with two children.
Literary Agent: Mitch Hoffman, The Aaron M. Priest Literary Agency, New York.
Film/TV Rights: Rich Green, The Gotham Group, West Hollywood, California.
