Iniquity
Iniquity won the 2013 National Indie Excellence Award for Suspense.
Only later would Secret Service agents realize they’d missed the signs that spring day, else they would surely have noticed the man in blue OR garb – gown, cap, booties, surgical gloves – roaming the grounds of George Washington University Hospital, with a cigarette between latex-covered fingers, on four consecutive days, with a shock of red hair spilling from under the man’s scrub cap as he drifted among preoccupied pedestrians like second-hand smoke.
With their suspicious and keen eyes peering through ubiquitous sunglasses surely they, of all people, should have noticed that on each of the last four days – days when the president visited his dying wife in the hospital – this same cigarette-smoking, latex-gloved surgeon was lurking in the area when the president’s motorcade arrived, despite their varying the time of the president’s arrival as well as the entrance he would use.
Had they examined the surveillance photos from each of those days more carefully, they would have seen this same man in many of the digital images and they might have known that the assassin was announcing himself.
Later, with the benefit of hindsight, and on closer scrutiny, they would see the obvious.
But it would be too late.
From the novel
Description
Self, so self-loving were iniquity.
—Shakespeare, Sonnet 62
Matt Cannon always knew his best friend, the president of the United States, might be a target for assassination. In today’s world of ultra-partisan politics fueled by the reckless rhetoric of violence, the danger came with the territory. There was always someone who wanted the president dead.
Alexandra Lake, a federal agent and militia group mole, always feared the president was a target of hate groups. And, in a nation of over 300 million people, many of them armed, there was always someone prepared to attack the president.
What neither of them could guess in a thousand years was WHO that someone would turn out to be.
The result is a story that takes the reader from the deep woods of Maine to the Oval Office; from militia haunts to the halls of Congress; from Air Force One and Camp David to shabby motels and shooting ranges, for it is in these places that plots and intrigues are hatched … and exposed … with shocking consequences that throw Matt Cannon and Alexandra Lake together in a desperate chase to stop what others have iniquitously set in motion.
Part psychological thriller, part suspense, Iniquity is a novel about bitter political enemies and the extremes to which they will go to destroy each other.
Praise for Iniquity
"Gautreau has drawn complex, interesting, and frightening characters in this political thriller. In his grand descriptions of "place" he puts the reader in the same space as the characters and also in their minds. When you are with the heroes you think the way they do, and when you are with the villains the same is true. Of course there are many levels of villainy here as well as heroism and it will challenge you to question your own ideas of which is which. It's a "page-turner" for sure, and it stays with you between readings. Just when you think you know what will happen it doesn't and that keeps you coming back for more. Great read and great gift!!"
Reader Review
Past Praise for Norm Gautreau
“Characters, both major and minor, are vividly drawn ...”
Library Journal
“... very highly recommended ...”
Library Bookwatch
“Setting and characters intertwine nicely ... a fast moving novel ...”
Portland (ME) Press Herald
