Dead Line
-
- $15.99
-
- $15.99
Publisher Description
Lauded by critics and Washington insiders alike for his debut novel The Incumbent, and its national bestselling sequel, The Nominee, Brian McGrory returns with the third sensational thriller featuring intrepid newspaperman Jack Flynn.
For his entire career, Jack Flynn has been like a heat-seeking missile in pursuit of news, with the exclusive goal of splashing his revelations on the pages of his beloved Boston Record. But now he comes across a story that might be the hardest -- and maybe the last -- of his life.
Jack is the recipient of an explosive tip involving Toby Harkins, the fugitive leader of an Irish mafia and estranged son of none other than Boston Mayor Daniel Harkins. Toby also happens to be the prime suspect in the heist of a dozen priceless treasures from the Gardner Museum -- the largest unsolved art theft in American history. But no sooner does the morning paper hit the newsstands with Jack's shocking story than a beautiful young woman, the mysterious whistleblower, is shot in the head. As Jack digs into a conspiracy that winds from the back rooms of City Hall to the genteel parlors of proper Boston, he must come to terms with the fact that he has caused an innocent's death, and that the FBI may be using him in a deadly game of cat and mouse in which the players involved aren't nearly who or what they seem. As a result, Jack begins to question the integrity of the job to which he has devoted his adult life.
Engaging, suspenseful, and crackling with newsroom energy, Dead Line once again offers the kind of explosive action that's all in a day's work for Jack Flynn, a hero whose dogged search for truth may not last him until press time.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In his third gripping political thriller (after The Nominee), McGrory a columnist for the Boston Globe brings back Jack Flynn, ace reporter at the fictional Boston Record as, once again, Flynn sniffs out corruption in high places. Young government lawyer Hilary Kane is fleeing an abortive alcohol-fueled tryst with Daniel Harkins, Boston's aging mayor, when she chances upon a file in the mayor's computer incriminating the mayor's infamous son, Toby Harkins, one of the FBI's most wanted fugitives. A few nights later, Flynn is clandestinely contacted at a Red Sox game by legendary FBI agent Tom Jankle, who feeds him an exclusive story that the Feds have evidence linking Toby Harkins to the 13-year-old unsolved art heist at the Gardner Museum, the biggest art theft in history. Shortly after the Record breaks the story, Flynn catches a fleeting glimpse of Jankle while watching a live telecast beamed from the parking garage under Boston Common where Hilary Kane has been found shot dead. Puzzled that the FBI is trying to take jurisdiction in what should be a local homicide, Flynn breaks into Hilary Kane's apartment and is discovered by her sister, Maggie, who tells him that his front-page story caused Hilary's death. Shortly afterward, Maggie calls Flynn saying she is being stalked. Flynn arrives in Copley Square just in time to save her from an assassin's bullet, but she disappears into the crowd. After one of the stolen paintings is delivered to Flynn at the Record, the trail leads to Rome and Paris before the sleuthing reporter locates Maggie and learns that the mayor has never lost contact with his hoodlum son and has knowledge of the art theft. Ending with a white-knuckle showdown between Jankle and bad seed Toby, this top-notch thriller is rich in newsroom atmospherics, wry humor and credibly flawed good guys.