Tag Archives: Joe Demarco

This is the 9th book in Lawson’s Joe Demarco series. In the previous 8 books, we’ve established that Joe’s father worked for the mob and that legacy caused Joe difficulties in finding a suitable job, even with his law degree. In this book, the author goes back in time to give more colour to Joe’s father’s character, his work as a hitman and how he came to die.

The main plot point in this thriller is that Joe finds out who killed his father, and seeks to take revenge in some form. As Joe is a reputable person, without his father’s penchant for violence, he has to decide how to go about this – can he find a way to ruin the killer’s life without resorting to a silenced pistol? Fortunately, he has Emma, a former spy, to help him.

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This is the 8th in Lawson’s Joe Demarco series, which I am thoroughly enjoying. Picking books by new authors from charity book shops is rather fun, sometimes it’s a dead loss, but occasionally I get a real gem. That’s what happened with this series, having bought The Payback, the second in this series. I’ve caught up on the others (trying to stick to reading them in order!) and this is one of the best.

House Odds features each of the usual characters in this series – primarily Joe Demarco (a political fixer with a background in law and a shady family history) and John Mahoney ( Joe’s boss, prominent Democrat congressman and formally Speaker of the House). We have cameos by Emma (often Joe’s accomplice in these thrillers), Neil (computer hacker), Mary Pat (John’s wife), and Alice (Joe’s insider at a telecom firm who sells him information).

As ever, Joe is set an impossible task by Mahoney, to investigate why his middle daughter Molly has been charged with insider trading and clean up the situation. Joe would rather sort out his love life or play golf, but he makes contact with the mob and finds that Molly is not the innocent girl he first thought.

Lots going on in this book, the bravery of Joe Demarco in some of these situations is commendable (although his dad was a hitman, Joe himself stays out of conflict whenever possible), and we see the full scale of Mahoney’s ruthless side.

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