Potomac Fever

A high-powered thriller set in Washington, D.C., features a pair of cops in a fiendishly clever plot that involves everything from kinky sex to shady real estate development. Local media.

A modern fable of campaign finance reform, this noir romp through Washingtons power strata shimmers with local color and local gossip. When an ultra-shady deal to finance a presidential campaign with drug money stalls, a nightclub massacre gets is going again. Coincidentally, a beautiful restaurant hostess is murdered. Are the crimes related? Police detective Cal Terrell and partner Roberta Short, whose previous shenanigans have put them in the nothing to lose category, try to crack the case, with dire results. Henry Horrock is a pseudonym for the husband-and-wife team of Diane Henry and Nicholas Horrock, both journalists and the authors of Blood Red, Snow White (LJ 12/91). Beltway buffs will enjoy this fast, entertaining roman clef. The dialog is punchy, the plots are suitably complex, and the authors convincingly render the nastiness of the characters and their machinations. Political thriller fans will not be disappointed and will nurse a secret hope that silent Cal will appear again.Barbara Conaty, Library of Congress
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From the pseudonymous husband and wife team of Diane Henry and Nicholas Horrock (Blood Red, Snow White) comes a seamless collaboration that tingles with suspense, breathing new life into the clich?-ridden White House conspiracy plot. Homicide Detective Lt. Cal Terrell wakes up in the hospital unable to speak, but devotedly attended by his ex-wife, Vivian. As he fades in and out of consciousness, Cal relives the attack on his life, which is tied to the murder of Mary Jeanne Turner, the hostess of a posh D.C. restaurant, who was branded on her buttock with a letter "B" just before she died. Investigating the case with his voluptuous partner Sgt. Bobbie Short, Terrell soon finds links to D.C.'s black Republican mayor, Martin Cameron; a real estate development called Rivergate; Vivian's current husband, Edward St. Denis, who's a White House aide; and a shoot-out at the Reggae Club, which just happens to be located in a neighborhood slated to be torn down as part of the Rivergate project. When Terrell learns about a party on a boat called Potomac Fever, the White House connection falls into place, but there's nothing tired about the way Horrock lays the trail. The writing here is crisp and clear; the characters are sharply drawn and always believable, and the realistic dialogue has zing and heft. A clear picture of how Washington worksAthe way power and money and race keep colliding against each otherAis visible on every page. This is a stand-out effort: exciting, engrossing and impossible to put down.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Set in Washington, D.C., this story begins with the torture and murder of a beautiful young woman and quickly becomes a conspiracy within a conspiracy within a conspiracy. Lieutenant Cal Terrell and Sergeant Bobbie Short start out searching for a kinky killer and soon realize that people in high places, including the White House, are more interested in the case being closed than solved. When not being attacked by a Salvadoran hit squad, Terrell and Short find reasons to suspect everyone--from the head of homicide, the sex-crazed mayor, and a top lobbyist, to the White House counsel now married to Terrell's ex, and even the president. Written by a husband-and-wife team, Diane Henry and Nicholas Horrock, under the single pseudonym of Henry Horrock, this is a masterfully constructed thriller that keeps readers guessing all the way to the last chapter. Budd Arthur

Cluttered and routine Washington-based police procedural, the second from husband-and-wife team of Diane Henry and Nicholas Horrock (Blood Red, Snow White,1992). The story takes off with a powerfully detailed account of the injuries suffered by Washington, D.C., Metro Homicide Lieutenant Cal Terrell, whos been beaten nearly to death by a team of masked assailants at his rustic horse-farm home. While emergency room staff fuss over his battered body, Terrell remembers, through a series of flashbacks, salient moments in his investigation of the murder of Mary Jeanne Turner, a 19-year-old restaurant hostess whose body, fished out of Chesapeake Bay, was disfigured by a B branded on her buttocks. Fortunately, none of the characters that follow, with the exception of Terrell's partner, the predictably beautiful and feisty Sergeant Roberta ``Bobbie'' Short, and his equally predictable bureaucratic back-pedaling police chief Nathaniel Bench, have the letter B in their names, and they aren't suspects. Then, while investigating a drive-by shooting in front of a Jamaican nightclub, Terrell and Short find evidence that what had seemed a random act of gang violence was, in fact, part of a plan to persuade the neighborhood's few remaining residents to sell their property to black realtor Virgil James, a good friend of Mayor Martin Cameron. James was not only seen squiring Turner around before she died, but was also assembling property so that wealthy power-broker Harry Moray, a good buddy of the Presidents, could turn D.C.'s slums into a sprawl of upscale condos. Before Terrell can nab Moray, though, Moray tries to bribe him to join his security force. Then Terrell's ex-wife Vivian, a gorgeous TV news reporter who never seems to be in front of a camera, blows back into his life, complaining about her dull drunk of a husband, a White House counsel who might be involved in a secret cover-up. . . . Tangled plotting is snarled even more by clumsy prose, stilted dialogue, and enough red herrings to stock a Georgetown deli. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.