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Mohrbooks Literary Agency
Sebastian Ritscher |
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SHINING CITY
SHINING CITY is a cross between Jack Reacher and SCANDAL, with an in-depth political insight that’s more common in Washington biographies than in fiction. SHINING CITY’s infusion of philosophical asides with heart-pounding action hits that sweet spot for readers who want a churn-and-burn they don’t have to feel guilty about reading.
Peter Rena is a “fixer.” A former interrogator for the Green Berets, he has a knack for finding out exactly what people want to hide most and burying it. Rena and his partner, a fearless Ivy Leaguer named Randi Brooks, have only one principle when it comes to their “consulting” work: they only repair the lives of decent people. However, when the President of the United States calls on Rena to vet candidates for the next Supreme Court Justice—and to ensure his preferred candidate gets confirmed—Rena fears he may be forced to decide between living by the code that has driven him ever since his retirement from the Special Forces, and angering the most powerful man in the nation. But what Rena isn’t prepared for is that the President’s preferred candidate is someone he deeply respects and admires.
Edmund Madison has the pedigree to be a political shark—Harvard graduate, Stanford Dean, appellate judge—and yet his writings are not safe and focused, in the way of someone grooming himself to ascend to a higher throne. Madison writes authentically about a range of subjects, from astronomy to computer science, as well as drafts nuanced opinions about the matters of law. In another era, Madison would have been a Da Vinci or a Thomas Paine—revered and celebrated—but in this era of partisan politics and power plays, could a man of this caliber really be confirmed? Even with Rena’s help?
The situation becomes even more complicated when Rena discovers a threat against Madison’s life. An unnamed man emerges from prison with a hit list, and Madison’s name is on it. Now with the clock ticking before Madison’s confirmation hearings, the unnamed man needs to kill Madison before his new status makes him inaccessible. As Rena protects Madison from the killer’s threats, he can’t understand why someone would try to kill this pillar of a man. If Madison is the person Rena thinks he is, then who could have a grudge against him? Rena scrambles to discover whether, in helping Madison get confirmed, he has done the one thing he said he’d never do: help the bad guys get ahead, all the while staying one step ahead of the killer.
TOM ROSENSTIEL: Currently the executive director of the American Press Institute, Tom is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute and founder of the Project for Excellence in Journalism at the Pew Research Center. Former chief Congressional Correspondent for Newsweek as well as a national correspondent in Washington for the Los Angeles Times and press critic for MSNBC, Tom is fascinated by the point where politics converges with morality. SHINING CITY, Tom’s eighth book and his first novel, explores just that.
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Book
Published 2017-02-21 by Ecco/Harper Collins |