The Inside Ring

A Novel

By: Michael Lawson

Narrated by: Peter Bradbury

Length: 5 hrs and 40 mins

Publisher's Summary

From a bluff overlooking Georgia's untamed Chattooga River, an assassin fires three shots. The President of the United States is wounded; his best friend and a Secret Service agent are killed. Two days later, a man in Landover, Maryland, commits suicide and in the man's home is overwhelming evidence that he was responsible for the assassination attempt.

General Andy Banks, the Secretary of Homeland Security, is nursing a guilty conscience. Only days before the assassination attempt on the President, Banks had received a note with a dire warning: "Eagle One is in danger. Cancel Chattooga River. The inside ring has been compromised. This is not a joke." The message, on Secret Service stationery, was signed "An agent in the wrong place". Banks immediately passed the note on to Secret Service Director Patrick Donnelly, who proceeded to ignore it.

Even after the assassin is found dead, Banks is determined to dig a little deeper. He turns to Speaker of the House John Fitzgerald Mahoney. The Speaker has a guy, an under-the-radar, go-to guy he uses for things like this, things he can't afford to have connected to his office. The guy is Joe DeMarco, an honest lawyer with a sordid family history.

After one meeting with Banks, DeMarco realizes he's in way over his head. But Mahoney finds the prospect of taking down Donnelly irresistible and sets DeMarco on a trail that twists through the Secret Service, the FBI, and the Department of Homeland Security and snakes all the way back to one of the more enduring mysteries of the 20th century.

Brimming with suspense, authenticity, and wit, The Inside Ring marks the debut of a major new talent and introduces a cast of intriguing characters with many more cases ahead.

©2005 Michael Lawson (P)2005 Random House, Inc. Random House Audio, a division of Random House, Inc.

Critic Reviews

"This is high-level entertainment from a writer who could soon rise to the top of the thriller heap." (Publishers Weekly)

It's a good read.

This was a good book. It started out a bit slow but then picks up. Toward the end, it was really hard to put it down.The blend of chracters is what made this book good.