Book Review

By Derryll White

Lawson, Mike (2024).  Kingpin.

Mike Lawson has 16 previous published novels in the Joe DeMarco thriller series. The central character, Joe De Marco, is a fixer.  When something goes wrong in the political world, Joe gets called.

He works for John Mahoney, a Democrat and Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, the presiding officer of the house and the second in the presidential line of succession. It is a prestigious position.  When a billionaire Boston businessman has Mahoney deposed his ego compels him to fight back – with DeMarco.

The novel is a simple narrative work, telling the story rather than letting it evolve through the complexities of developing characters.  Consequently, there is not a lot of insightful side trips into political or economic alleys.  Lawson is certainly competent in developing the story but the reader does not learn a lot, and determines very early who the eventual killer is.

Lawson’s publisher obviously likes him but this reader was left flat and the author was put on the do-not-recycle list.

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Excerpts from the novel:

GET OUT OF JAIL CARD – The public defender also knew that the judge had a problem in that the jail was already holding twice as many people as it had been designed to hold.  She said, “That’s absurd.  He trespassed, for Christ’s sake.  He didn’t assault anyone.  He didn’t murder anyone.  And my client doesn’t have that kind of money.”  She said this having no idea how much money Morgenthaler had.

CHARACTER – William Foster, chief of the U.S. Capitol Police, reacted to this statement without commenting.  Foster was a mountain of a man with a shaved head who reminded DeMarco of Anthony “Booger” McFarland, an NFL defensive tackle who won two Super Bowl rings.  But Foster had never played football; in college, he’d carried the tuba in the marching band.

– Derryll White once wrote books but now chooses to read and write about them.  When not reading he writes history for the web at www.basininstitute.org.

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