A curious home-invasion case, and the detective determined to get to the truth

When an intruder with murderous intent breaks into Roger Smith’s modest home one night, the big brute gets more than he bargained for, ending up a bloody corpse staining Roger’s carpet.

Washington, DC, Detective Grace Lillinthal is summoned to the crime scene and marvels at the outcome. Why would anyone want to kill gray-haired Roger Smith? He’s the picture of respectability-a widower devoted to his family, an amateur painter, and a civil servant who works at the Government Publishing Office. When asked why he’d be a target, a clearly shaken Roger claims to be baffled.

But instinct tells Grace there’s more to Roger’s story, and when she learns that Roger-after killing his home invader and before calling the police-phoned John McKenna, she knows she’s onto something. John McKenna is a disreputable character of the first order. He’s the gregarious, larger-than-life owner of a local bar that’s a notorious den of thieves.

After one hired assassin fails, another’s bound to show up. The clock is ticking for Roger and McKenna to find out who wants Roger dead and why-and suspects abound. Stubborn Grace is as determined to dig up Roger’s secrets as he is to keep them hidden, and soon the investigation becomes a relentless game of cat and mouse. Even if Roger doesn’t consider himself a criminal, as chaos takes hold of his world, survival requires that he think like one.

I have been a fan of Mike Lawson’s novels for a very long time (ever since his debut, The Inside Ring), and his Joe DeMarco series is one of my favourite ongoing thriller series. With his latest novel, the author introduces a new protagonist and slight shift in genre. When I was lucky enough to get a review copy, I dove right in. And I’m happy to report that I enjoyed this very much.

While set in Washington, D.C., McKenna’s Guy is not a political thriller, unlike most of Lawson’s other novels (all of which I do recommend). This is more of a police procedural, and the story focuses on the fall-out of a home-invasion that just doesn’t make sense to one of the detectives called in to investigate. The owner of the home, Roger Smith appears to be a regular near-retiree: he has a steady job, a clean record, and no apparent links to organized (or other) crime. In an unexpected twist of luck, Smith managed to kill the hitman who broke in at the dead of night. Grace Lillinthal, the aforementioned detective, comes to believe that it was not a case of mistaken identity, and that there must be some other explanation. When Smith’s lawyer appears on the scene, paid for by John McKenna, Lillinthal’s cop-sense goes into overdrive: McKenna is a long-time denizen of the Washington underground, and the detective has had him in her sights for years.

What follows is a cat-and-mouse type story, as Lillinthal tries to figure out the connection between Smith and McKenna, and Smith tries to keep his secrets. Through Smith’s chapters, we also gradually and effectively learn about his past and how he came to be connected with McKenna. The novel mainly alternates between Lillinthal and Smith’s perspectives, but with a handful of other POVs sprinkled in to good effect.

As with many of the best, more-realistic crime novels, much of what unfolds is the result of a combination of dedicated, dogged detective work and the involved criminals making mistakes (some of them quite clumsy). Readers will come to root for both Lillinthal and Smith, in different ways, so the ending was ultimately quite satisfying. Lawson does a great job of keeping the story moving, while not rushing the plot. If you’re familiar with his political thrillers, you’ll already know that he has a gift for writing engaging, realistic characters, and this is on display here, too. His prose is also, of course, very well-written and fluid.

It’s unclear if this is intended as the first in a new series, but I for one would be interested in more novels starring Detective Lillinthal: she brings both typical and atypical cop-qualities to the genre (perhaps a little reminiscent of Michael Connelly’s Renée Ballard), and I think there’s plenty of scope to turn this into a series. If you’re a fan of police procedurals, then I think you should give this a read. Recommended.

*

Mike Lawson’s McKenna’s Guy is due to be published by Blackstone Publishing in North America and in the UK, on July 7th.

Also on CR: Interview with Mike Lawson (2011); Reviews of Dead on Arrival, House Secrets, House Justice, House Divided, House Blood, House Reckoning, House Rivals, House Arrest, and The Asset

Follow the Author: Website, Goodreads
Review copy received via Edelweiss