(DEMARCO SERIES #4)

In House Secrets, a retired congressman asks John Mahoney — the cagey, hard-drinking Speaker of the House — to look into the death of a reporter who worked the political beat for the Washington Post. Mahoney sends his reluctant bagman, Joe DeMarco, to investigate – or, as Mahoney puts it, to turn over some rocks and see what sort of creatures crawl out.

DeMarco soon learns that the reporter was on the trail of Senator Paul Morelli, a rising star considered a shoe-in for his party’s presidential nomination. Some politicians are lucky, and Morelli has been luckier than most, but his past has already been scrutinized by the press and the other party. DeMarco decides the reporter’s death was nothing more than a tragic accident until CIA agents and mobsters start to crawl out from under those rocks he’s turned over.