Dead Watch - John Sandford

In my opinion, Dead Watch is at the same level as the worst in Prey series. It is not bad, but needed more woven intrigues. Perhaps I didn’t like it very much because the story was about politics – but when I think about it, I enjoyed the Mary Queen of Scots court stories which were full of intrigues: friends could become foes and vice versa.

The hero in this book was a 33 year-old army intelligence veteran, now worked as a forensic bureaucrat, named Jake Winter. If something went wrong, he tried to find out what really happened. Basically, like Lucas Davenport, he was a fixer.

Madison’s attorney: “If there’s some really screwed-up problem, that nobody can fix, and that must be fixed, Jake fixes it. He makes lists of people who need to be fired, who need to be promoted. He had ears all over the bureaucracy… he scares the heck out of those people. And that’s what’s got to be done if you want to find [Lincoln].”

In Afghanistan, Jake Winter’s leg had been wounded and now he was limp and usually walked with a cane. He lived in Burleith, Washington, and worked for Bill Danzig, the president’s chief of staff.

Lincoln Bowe, a former senator from Virginia, was missing and probably dead. His wife, Madison thought that his rival, Arlo Goodman, the governor, knew something about it because she was being followed by the Watchmen, the governor’s volunteer militia group, or the governor’s thugs. There was a rumor that the missing politician had had ‘a package’ about a big corruption done by the vice president that could bring him down. Jake Winter had to find the package before Arlo Goodman, who also wanted it because of his ambition to be the next vice president.

I think the mysterious man who first tipped Jake Winter about the package's existence, stayed mysterious.