Truman's 23rd Capital Crimes novel (after 2006's Murder at the Opera) offers little suspense and even less insight into the wheelings and dealings of contemporary Washington, D.C. One day, U.S. Senator Lyle Simmons, a presidential aspirant, arrives home to find his wife, Jeanette, murdered in their foyer. As the police investigate, fissures in the public facade of the Simmons's marriage appear, and Simmons's oldest friend, retired detective Phil Rotondi, who lost Jeanette to Simmons during college, wrestles with whether he should share all he knows about the politician with the authorities. Frequent flashbacks to those college days disrupt any narrative flow, and the florid and uninspired writing ("Washington! Was there any other place in the world with as much intrigue on a daily basis, and with so much at stake?") won't lead readers to confuse this mediocre thriller with the Machiavellian plotting of writers mining similar ground such as David Baldacci.
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Praise for Margaret Truman
“Truman ‘knows the forks’ in the nation’s capital and how to pitchfork her readers into a web of murder and detection.”
–The Christian Science Monitor
Murder at the Opera
“Bestseller Truman’s twenty-second D.C. mystery [is] one of her strongest. . . . [She] widens her scope to reveal a charming supporting cast. . . . Glimpses of intelligence gathering in the Middle East lend a timely feel.”
–Publishers Weekly
Murder at The Washington Tribune
“Hooks the reader immediately.”
–The Oklahoman
Murder at Union Station
“Truman has produced another knowing look at Washington politics. She, of all people, should know her characters well, and she draws them with style.”
–The Dallas Morning News
Murder at Ford’s Theatre
“Dead-on descriptions of Washington’s most crack-ridden streets and exclusionary shindigs . . . Readers who enjoy travelogue, gossip, and social commentary in their whodunits will enjoy Murder at Ford’s Theatre.”
–USA Today
From the Hardcover edition.