Worst Case Scenario

by Michael Bowen

Overview

Foreign Service veteran Richard Michaelson knows that it is often better to talk to secretaries than big wigs in the political jungles of Washington, DC. But when one such ambitious young secretary turns up dead in a locked hotel room, Michaelson suddenly realizes just how much she knew...and that the killer might now be after him. Now everyone is clamoring to get their hands on the mysterious document in the dead woman's possession. Soon investigators, staffers and liaisons are coming out of the woodwork to keep things quiet. But for Michaelson, solving this mystery could be a matter of life and death.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781615954513
Publisher:	Sourcebooks
Publication date:	04/02/2024
Series:	Washington D.C. Mysteries , #2
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	250
Sales rank:	821,502
File size:	989 KB

About the Author

Michael Bowen, a trial lawyer practicing in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, is the author of numerous mysteries and non-fiction works. He graduated cum laude from Harvard Law School in 1976. While at Harvard, he served on the Board of Editors of the Harvard Law Review. Before going to Harvard, Bowen graduated summa cum laude from Rockhurst College, a small Jesuit college in Kansas City, Missouri. He received a bachelor’s degree in History. Bowen lives with his wife, Sara Armbruster Bowen (also a Harvard Law School graduate), and their three younger children in Fox Point, a suburb of Milwaukee.

Editorial Reviews

The cloak-and-dagger world of national politics is put under a microscope in this fourth investigation featuring retired foreign service officer Richard Michaelson (Corruptly Procured) and his lady love, Marjorie. When Sharon Bedford dies in her locked hotel room at the end of the Contemporary Policy Dynamics Conference, Richard, like nearly everyone else, thinks she committed suicide. In fact, he only remembers her as someone who had a secret she wanted to share and with whom he tenuously planned to meet later. But after he and Marjorie talk to Sharon's former fianc and are shown a coded list the woman had mailed to him before her death, they agree to find out more about why she died. Although she seems to have poisoned herself, they are puzzled about a photocopy, found in her hotel room, of an insensitive birthday card sent to women a year after their abortions. Why is Sharon mixed up in the birthday-card campaign ploy? What secret was she going to tell Michaelson? How does the coded note point to her killer? The volatile mixture of politics and government secrets, all of which are deadly, explodes in a tale of innuendo run amok that would make Joe Klein proud. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Murder tracks retired diplomat and part-time detective Richard Michaelson (last seen in Corruptly Procured, St. Martin's, 1994) to a second-rate policy conference in Charleston, West Virginia. Young politico Sharon Bedford is hustling for a job and has a potentially devastating secret to offer up in return. Instead, she winds up dead in her bath, the victim of an obscure poison. Michaelson, with the help of companion Marjorie Randolph and Bedford's grieving fianc, Todd Gallagher, team up to track down the murderer. Bowen's renditions of D.C. power plays are well-executed and amusing, but the trail of clues that lead the trio to their quarry is so improbable, and the killer so obvious, that the final unveiling has all the drama of an episode of Scooby Doo. However, Michaelson is a charmer, and the suspectsrecognizable Washington types allmake it worth the ride.Adam Mazmanian, "Library Journal"

Library Journal