The president has been shot at and wounded. A secret service agent is killed. The marksman escapes but the few clues found in the blind from which he shot indicate an expert and highly devious sniper. This "ghost" left "no brass, no footprints, no areas where the grass had been trampled down." Two days after the attack, Harold Edwards, a Maryland man, commits suicide and leaves a note confessing to the crime. Only his profile doesn't account for the level of expertise.

As far as notes go, General Andy Banks, the Secretary of Homeland Security got one too, only his was received before the assassination attempt -- two days before -- in time to take measures to avoid it. What's more, the warning was on Secret Service stationery and when he turned it over to the Director of the service, Patrick Donnelly, it was ignored. Now Banks is wondering why, and who the tipoff agent might be.

His option is to seek the help of Speaker of the House John Mahoney who, in turn, turns to his inhouse legman, Joe DeMarco, an investigative lawyer he has titled, "Counsel Pro Tem for Liaison Affairs," his mask of official connection to cases. DeMarco, the son of a dead mob boss, the handy operative with the legal background used to doing "small stuff," gets plunged into a mystery that goes to strange places with people who have far too much inside position and power.

Prime among these is Donnelly himself. Why did he ignore the warning? Why is he so hostile to DeMarco's implying that Harold Edwards might be the wrong man? Turf is certainly involved, but so, apparently, is something more sinister. A study of the video tape of the incident raises even more questions.

The writer of the note turns out to be Billy Mattis, an agent personally transferred by Donnelly into his unit just a couple of weeks before the attack. But, when Mattis is blown away by an unknown assailant in a place designed to be the setting for a coverup, and is in turn killed in self defense by DeMarco, the subsequent trail leads to a small county in Georgia, 'gators, and a very intimate encounter with pure, slimy evil.

First time author Michael Lawson invests his suspenseful and intricate story with all the inside knowledge of a one-time "independent contractor" for the U.S. Navy. We're more than likely to have another adventure with his main character Joe DeMarco, whose persistence and drive overcomes his very human fear and reticence in the face of great danger.