The Inside Ring: A Joe DeMarco Thriller by Mike Larson

 It opens with an assassination attempt on the president. He is only wounded, but his best friend and a Secret Service Agent are killed. It turns out that the attack wasn't without warning. General Andrew Banks, the Secretary of Homeland Security, received a note that the president was in danger, and even more alarming, that Secret Service agents guarding the president had been compromised.
            General Banks is reluctant to tell the FBI about the note, So he requests help from his friend, Speaker Mahoney, and Mahoney assigns his man DeMarco to determine if the Secret Service was really involved. 

           The principal character is DeMarco, who does political odd jobs for a wily old pol who happens to be Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. DeMarco is escaping not only a bad marriage, but a family legacy in organized crime, which gives him an interesting foot in two different camps. It appears that a disgruntled individual took some shots at the U. S. President (who is a presence but not a character in this story) and missed, killing some other folks, before capping his failure with a suicide and a confession. There is reason to believe that there is more below the surface of this attempt than meets the eye, and DeMarco is directed to poke around. He's not quite up to the task, but manages with luck to survive several harrowing experiences and bring the truth to the semi-light.
            The synopsis leads you to believe it is a political thriller but  it was more like a poorly rated TV crime story . There were too many clichés, Italians in the mafia, southern people helpless and stupid, politicians are all on the take. The poor hero has to go around the law to find justice, predictable.  It just didn’t have enough to care about what happens.

            I wouldn’t recommend this story. I received the eBook for my review