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Tritt ein in eine Welt voller Geschichten

Hören und Lesen

Mike Lawson

Washington fixer Joe DeMarco returns in a “highly readable” and “fast-paced” thriller that takes readers into the lethal world of international espionage (Publishers Weekly).
 
Author of House Witness, 2019 Edgar Award Finalist for Best Novel

 When it comes to dealing with possible scandals, Joe DeMarco made his bones working for the wily Speaker of the House John Mahoney. But now Joe’s unique skills are needed outside the nation’s capital.
 
 The secretary of the Navy has received a tip that fraud is being committed on a US Naval base. Unwilling to launch a formal investigation, the secretary has asked Mahoney to send DeMarco to investigate before things get out of control.
 
 It doesn’t take DeMarco long to uncover not fraud, but outright treason and foreign infiltration on the base—which puts him right in the crosshairs of a ruthless foreign operative who proves to be deadlier than any foe he’s ever faced before.
 
 Full of the intrigue, action, and stunning plot twists readers have come to expect, in The Second Perimeter “Lawson again ratchets up the suspense and takes DeMarco on a wild ride” (The Oregonian).

Grove Press

The Joe DeMarco Thrillers

The Second Perimeter

This tale of political suspense was one of the Seattle Times’s Top Ten Thrillers of the Year: “I couldn’t put it down” (Vince Flynn).

Author of House Witness, 2019 Edgar Award Finalist for Best Novel

There has been an assassination attempt on the president. He is only wounded—but his best friend and a Secret Service Agent have been killed.

As it turns out, the attack wasn’t without warning. Gen. Andrew Banks, Secretary of Homeland Security, received a note that the president was in danger, and even more alarming, that Secret Service agents guarding the president had been compromised. General Banks is reluctant to tell the FBI about the note, partly for self-serving political reasons, and partly because he doesn’t want to damage the Secret Service’s reputation based on something that might very well be a hoax.

So he requests help from his friend, Speaker Mahoney, and Mahoney assigns his man Joe DeMarco, who must untangle the truth behind the tragedy—and assess the danger …

“[A] wonderfully complex plot, sardonic humor, and memorable characters. ” —The Baltimore Sun

“Lawson’s debut [is] in a league by itself … This is high-level entertainment. ” —Publishers Weekly

The Inside Ring

“The plot and pace are relentless” as Joe DeMarco investigates a pharmaceutical corporation that has gone beyond the bounds of science and into murder (Booklist, starred review).

Author of House Witness, 2019 Edgar Award Finalist for Best Novel

Things have been better for Washington, DC, insider Joe DeMarco. His boss is no longer Speaker of the House and his girlfriend has left him. So, when he’s asked to look into the murder conviction of a lobbyist, he’s less than enthusiastic. But he soon uncovers a conspiracy that ignites his sense of righteous rage.

Two years ago, Orson Mulray, CEO of Mulray Pharma, discovered a miracle drug worth billions. But the drug needed to be tested on humans. And Mulray needed more than blood samples—he needed autopsy results. So he sent the drug into a devastated warzone as part of a “relief effort. ”

But when his twisted scheme was discovered, someone had to die—and a certain lobbyist had to take the fall for murder. To clear his name, DeMarco must go up against a remorseless corporate juggernaut with almost unlimited resources, and take on a pair of callous killers unlike anything he’s ever encountered …

With House Blood, Mike Lawson delivers “another page-turner brimming with authentic Washington, DC, detail and distinctive, engaging characters” (Library Journal).

Atlantic Monthly Press

House Blood

Washington insider Joe DeMarco returns in an electrifying thriller that will grab you with its “clever, original, fast-moving, and unpredictable plot” (Phillip Margolin, New York Times–bestselling author).

Author of House Witness, 2019 Edgar Award Finalist for Best Novel

Political fixer Joe DeMarco has handled plenty of difficult situations for his boss, congressman John Mahoney. But nothing has been so politically sensitive, or hit so close to home, as his current assignment.

Mahoney’s daughter has been arrested for insider trading. An engineer with a high-flying tech firm, she allegedly placed a half-million dollar bet on one of the firm’s clients. DeMarco’s job is to clear her name—and keep his boss’s name clean in the process.

But DeMarco discovers that Mahoney’s daughter has gotten mixed up with some very wealthy and dangerous criminals who used her to make a quick fortune. And they aren’t about to let DeMarco get in their way.

Author Mike Lawson delivers a page-turning mystery full of “funny lines, fiendishly complicated plotting, and swiftly and sharply etched characters” that “make this installment one of the most enjoyable in the series” (Kirkus Reviews).

House Odds

Washington, DC, fixer Joe DeMarco is on a mission of revenge in a thriller that’s “fast, assured and as refreshingly unsentimental as Joe himself” (Kirkus Reviews).

Author of House Witness, 2019 Edgar Award Finalist for Best Novel
 
 Joe DeMarco always knew that his father, Gino, had worked for a local New York mafioso. But it was only after Gino was murdered that DeMarco found out the truth—that his father was a cold-blooded killer for the mob.
 
 Now, twenty years later, a dying mob associate tells DeMarco a shocking secret: His father was killed by an NYPD cop who has since risen to the rank of police commissioner. And now, that police commissioner has been nominated to take control of the FBI.
 
 Torn between his long-held moral code, his conflicted love for his father, and his desire for vengeance, DeMarco must decide how to stop his father’s murderer before the man becomes absolutely untouchable: with his brains and his respect for justice—or with a bullet?
 
 Delivering “a tense, twisting plot and a sociopathic villain worthy of a seat in the House,” Mike Lawson once again proves himself to be a master of the down-and-dirty political arena (Booklist).

House Reckoning

A Seattle Times bestseller and “[an] effervescent, wholly delicious revenge fantasy . . . about big money, big politics, and big crime” (Kirkus Reviews).
 
 Congressional fixer Joe DeMarco is dispatched to his boss Congressman John Mahoney’s hometown of Boston. Mahoney wants him to help Elinore Dobbs, an elderly woman fighting against a real estate developer intent on tearing down her apartment building for a massive new development. Mahoney is just in it for the free press until Sean Callahan, the developer, disrespects him and even worse, Elinore suffers a horrible “accident,” likely at the hands of two thugs on Callahan’s payroll. Now Mahoney and DeMarco are out for revenge. DeMarco tries to dig up dirt through Callahan’s former mentor, and one of his ex-wives. But it’s only when DeMarco gets a tip on the likely illegal source of some of Callahan’s financing that things get deadly.
 
 A fast-paced adventure into the cutthroat world behind the wrecking ball, House Revenge is another gripping tale of collusion and corruption from a beloved political thriller writer.
 
 “Originality, intelligence, and humor lift Lawson’s excellent 11th Joe DeMarco thriller . . . DeMarco provides all the fun and action that Lawson’s fans have come to expect.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
 
 “Lawson’s DeMarco novels are often shrewdly prescient . . . Angry Americans will flock to House Revenge.” —Booklist (starred review)

House Revenge

Edgar Award Finalist: Someone may be tampering with witnesses to protect the powerful in this “thoroughly involving” thriller (Booklist, starred review).

John Mahoney, Minority Leader of the House and Joe DeMarco’s longtime employer, has kept more than one secret from his wife over the years, but none so explosive as this: He has a son, and that son has just been shot dead in a bar in Manhattan. Mahoney immediately dispatches DeMarco to New York to assist prosecutor Justine Porter, but with five bystanders willing to testify against the rich-kid killer, the case seems like a slam-dunk. That is, until Porter begins to suspect that someone is interfering with those witnesses, and that this may be connected to a pattern of cases across the country. Is someone getting witnesses out of the way when the fate of a wealthy defendant is on the line?

With the help of Porter’s intern, as outrageously smart as she is young, veteran DC fixer DeMarco becomes determined to follow that question through to its violent resolution in House Witness, “one of the best in a superior series” (Deadly Pleasures).

House Witness

“First-rate … Lawson’s series is the closest thing on the market today to the witty political thrillers of the late, great Ross Thomas. ” —Booklist

Author of House Witness, 2019 Edgar Award Finalist for Best Novel

As the fixer for Congressman John Mahoney in Washington, DC, 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 US Capitol and DeMarco is arrested for the murder, DeMarco knows he’s been framed. Locked up in Alexandria 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 a ruthless and competitive CEO who had a motive for killing Canton, related to a personal connection from long ago. But the case the F. B. I. has built against DeMarco is airtight, and not a single piece of evidence points to the CEO. Using her cunning and her DC connections, Emma sets out to prove that the powerful businessman has been using some fixers of his own.

Featuring crimes of passion, corporate corruption, and partisan feuds, House Arrest is the latest fast-paced read from “a reliably excellent writer” (The Seattle Times).

“A great author. ” —Lisa Gardner

House Arrest

A Washington fixer takes on a simple babysitting job for a powerful politician—that soon escalates into embezzlement and murder: “Excellent. ”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Fifteen-year-old Cassie Russell, the only daughter of a mega-rich Boston couple, is the sole survivor of a plane crash that killed her parents. She’s also the goddaughter of the Speaker of the House, John Mahoney, who’s now her legal guardian. Normally, Mahoney would send his kind-hearted wife to deal with his new ward, but she’s unavailable—so he dispatches his fixer, Joe DeMarco, to make sure the girl’s okay.

DeMarco’s job is only to put things into a holding pattern until Mrs. Mahoney is able to step in—but DeMarco unintentionally flips over a rock and out from under it crawls a lawyer, the one managing Cassie’s vast estate. DeMarco learns the lawyer has been embezzling—and may have killed Cassie’s parents.

What should have been a simple assignment soon unleashes murderous plots involving a Boston mob boss and his thugs, and DeMarco ends up chasing the scheming lawyer halfway around the world to save Cassie and ensure that justice is done—though he may ignore some of the legal niceties—in this fast-paced new mystery in the “consistently entertaining, well-crafted series” from the Edgar Award-nominated author (Booklist, starred review).

“A writer who gets everything right. ”—Cleveland Plain Dealer

House Privilege

A D. C. fixer heads to Wyoming on a personal mission in the new novel from the Edgar Award–finalist and “reliably excellent writer” (Seattle Times).

When someone close to him is shot dead in a roadside motel in a small Wyoming town, Joe DeMarco shirks his responsibilities as the Speaker of the House’s fixer to make sure the authorities are doing everything they can to catch the killer. He soon realizes that the rural area is dominated by Hiram Bunt, a wealthy rancher with an obstructionist streak who’s willing to take on the federal government at gunpoint and seems to have a number of politicians under his thumb.

But Bunt isn’t the only one in the way. DeMarco also learns that his friend―a woman he was once in love with―had unearthed explosive secrets during her time in the backwoods, and that the deputy in charge of the investigation may be ignoring leads to preserve a secret of his own. Surrounded by people willing to kill to maintain the status quo, DeMarco launches his own investigation into a growing list of intertwining suspects. And being DeMarco, he concludes that breaking the law to uncover the truth is the best way to ensure that justice is done …

“[A] consistently entertaining, well-crafted series. ” —Booklist

“A charmingly likable character. ” —Tess Gerritsen, New York Times bestselling author of the Rizzoli & Isles novels

“A writer who gets everything right. ” —The Plain Dealer