Capital Crimes series by Margaret Truman (16-17, 19-24)
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Overview: Margaret Truman won faithful readers with her works of biography and fiction, particularly her ongoing series of Capital Crimes mysteries. Her novels let us into the corridors of power and privilege, and poverty and pageantry, in the nation’s capital. She was the author of many nonfiction books, including The President’s House, in which she shares some of the secrets and history of the White House where she once resided. She lived in Manhattan and passed away in 2008.
Genre: Fiction > Mystery/Thriller
Murder At the Library of Congress (1999) 16
Margaret Truman looks inside one of D.C.’s great institutions, the Library of Congress, the place where much of the wisdom of the nation is collected, and finds blood on the floor.
Was there a second diary, beyond the one Columbus kept, describing his voyage to the New World? Leading scholars at the Library of Congress think so, and Annabel Smith, with her pre-Columbian interests, has been commissioned by the library’s magazine, Civilization, to write about it.
She is not the only person interested. Word comes through the rare-books black market that a wealthy bibliophile has been offered the second diary: He’d not only pay, he’d almost kill to possess it. Starting her search in the library itself, Annabel soon finds herself competing with an ambitious TV journalist. As both women come closer to finding the hidden documents, other questions creep up. Was the murder of the library’s most prominent Hispanic scholar connected to the missing diary? Further research leads them deeper into barely explored corners of the library and closer to having to face their own mortality.
Murder in Foggy Bottom (2000) 17
In this book, we not only tour Foggy Bottom — where the State Department is located — we also get inside looks at Moscow, an airliner in desperate trouble, and the makeup of a ruthless far-right terrorist group. And none of this is slapdash, either. Truman’s characters — a huge cast this time out — work as real people, and the information she gives us is always at least as dazzling as the plot itself. Her detailed analysis of the professions combating terrorism would be enough to satisfy most readers. But she gives us a lot more, including a glimpse of genuine undercover work and an engaging romance.
Murder at Ford’s Theatre (2002) 19
"The body of Nadia Zarinski, an attractive young woman who worked for Senator Bruce Lerner – and who volunteered at Ford’s – is discovered in the alley behind the theatre. Soon a pair of mismatched cops – young, studious Rick Klayman and gregarious veteran Moses "Mo" Johnson – start digging into the victim’s life, and find themselves confronting an increasing cast of suspects." There’s Virginia Senator Lerner himself, rumored to have had a sexual relationship with Nadia – and half the women in D.C. under ninety . . . Clarise Emerson, producer/director of Ford’s Theatre and ex-wife of the senator, whose nomination to head the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) is now threatened by the scandal . . . Jeremiah Lerner, her aimless, hot-tempered son, said to have been sleeping with Nadia when his famous father wasn’t . . . Bernard Crowley, the theatre’s comptroller, whose emotions overflow at the mention of the crime . . . faded British stage star Sydney Bancroft, desperate for recognition and a comeback, and armed with damning information about Clarise Emerson . . . and other complex characters from both sides of the footlights.
Murder at Union Station (2004) 20
Historic Union Station means nothing to the elderly man speeding south on the last lap of what will turn out to be a one-way journey from Tel Aviv to D.C. — on a train that will soon land him at Gate A-8 and, moments later, at St. Peter’s Gate. This weary traveler, whose terminal destination is probably hell, is Louis Russo, former mob hit man and government informer. Two men are at the station to meet him. One is Richard Marienthal, a young writer whose forthcoming book is based on Russo’s life. The other is the man who’ll kill him.
Russo has returned to help promote Marienthal’s book, which, although no one has been allowed to read it, already has some people shaking in their Gucci boots. Those in power fear that the contents will expose not only organized crime’s nefarious business but also a top-secret assignment abroad that Russo once masterminded for a very-high-profile Capitol Hill client. As news of Russo’s murder rockets from the MPD to the FBI and the CIA, from Congress to the West Wing, the final chapter of the story begins its rapid-fire unfolding.
In addition to the bewildered Marienthal and his worried girlfriend, Murder at Union Station features an array of memorable characters: rock-ribbed right-wing Senator Karl Widmer; ruthless New York publisher Pamela Warren; boozy MPD Detective Bret Mullin; shoe-shine virtuoso Joe Jenks; dedicated presidential political adviser Chet Fletcher; and President Adam Parmele himself — not to mention freelance snoops, blow-dried climbers, and a killer or two. There’s no place like the nation’s capital, and as her myriad fans know, Margaret Truman always gets it right. Murder at Union Station is a luxury express, non stopdelight.
Murder at The Washington Tribune (2005) 21
At the Washington, D.C. newspaper called The Tribune, a young woman has been murdered. And the hunt for her killer is making sensational and lethal headlines.
The victim was fresh out of journalism school, hoping to make a splash at the Trib – until a maintenance man finds her in a supply closet, brutally strangled to death. The journalists are at once horrified and anxious to solve this crime before the cops do, and put this scandal to rest. But the men and women at the Metropolitan Police Department aren’t going to let byline-hungry reporters get in their way. While the newspaper forms a task force, the cops create one of their own. Then a second woman is killed in Franklin Square. Like the first, she was young, attractive, and worked in the media.
For veteran Trib reporter Joe Wilcox, whose career is mired in frustration and disappointment, the case strikes close to home. His daughter is a beautiful, rising TV news star. As his relationship grows closer to a MPD detective, Joe sees a chance to renew himself as a reporter and a man. Spearheading the Trib’s investigation, he maneuvers it into a trap baited with a secret from his past.
Suddenly, Joe is risking his career, his marriage, and even his daughter’s life by playing a dangerous game with a potential serial killer. A police detective is bending the rules for the reporter she likes and trusts, but may not know as well as she thinks she does. As Joe’s daughter finds her way into the heart of a frantic manhunt, the walls come down between family, friendships, ethics, and ambition – and a killer hides in plain site.
Murder At the Opera (2006) 22
Political opera has been alive and well in Washington D.C. since the city became the nation’s capital, and the Washington National Opera company, housed at the Kennedy Center, is no stranger to politics itself.
Murder at the Opera re-introduces a popular couple who have appeared in some of the earlier Capital Crimes novels: law professor Mac Smith and his wife, Georgetown gallery owner Annabel Reed-Smith, who has a professional relationship with some of the Washington National Opera’s most renowned players – its trustees.
The book opens with a bloody discovery: the corpse of a young soprano who has been skewered with a prop from the WNO’s soon-to-premiere production of Puccini’s Tosca. As the media swarm, the company sets up its own task force, and Annabel asks Mac to be involved. Life imitates opera, and suddenly all the performers seem to have something to hide: passions for one another, histories better left uncovered, and even connections to foreign terrorists. The murder investigation is in a race against time mere weeks before opening night, a black-tie gala at which everyone – including the President himself – will be in the seats.
Murder On K Street (2007) 23
Nobody knows the crooked turns, slippery slopes, and dark, dangerous stretches of the Beltway better than Margaret Truman, dean of the Washington, D.C., mystery scene. And no one is better equipped to lead a suspenseful tour into the treacherous territory of big-time political lobbying, where the right information and enough influence can buy power – the kind that corrupts . . . and sometimes kills.
Arriving home from a fund-raising dinner, senior Illinois senator Lyle Simmons discovers his wife’s brutally bludgeoned body. And like any savvy politician with presidential aspirations, his first move is to phone his attorney. In this case, it’s his old friend and college roommate, former DA Philip Rotondi, who gamely agrees to step out of quiet retirement and into the thick of a D.C.-style political, criminal, and public relations maelstrom from which no one will escape unscathed.
The crime scene is barely cold when the senator’s estranged daughter arrives hurling shocking allegations of murder at her father, despite a roomful of well-heeled witnesses who can provide Simmons with an alibi. Meanwhile, D.C.’s rumor mills and spin machines shift into high gear as speculation swirls around a tabloid- and TV-ready prime suspect: Jonell Marbury, a dashing lawyer turned lobbyist at a powerful K Street firm – and the last person to see the victim alive. But Rotondi harbors his own unsettling suspicions.
And after a second woman is killed, he discovers that a long-buried secret from his past may hold the key to cracking the case.
Aided by sleuthing ex-attorneys Mac and Annabel Smith, Rotondi reawakens the prosecutorial skills that served him so well in his gang-busting days, following the stench of dirty money and dirtier tricks across the country and across the thresholds of back rooms and front offices alike – where doing the right thing is for fools and taking on the system is a dead man’s gambit.
Murder Inside the Beltway (2008) 24
In an esteemed writing career spanning nearly three decades, Margaret Truman penned twenty-four thrilling Capital Crimes novels, which The Atlanta Journal-Constitution called a ‘dazzling series.’ Now, in her crowning achievement, Murder Inside the Beltway, Truman brilliantly shows that politics can be not only dirty but downright deadly.
Rosalie Canó, a Washington, D.C., call girl, is found bludgeoned to death in her Adams-Morgan apartment. Investigating the grisly homicide are Walt Hatcher, a tough, sour, intolerant twenty-three-year veteran of the D.C. police department; Detective Mary Hall, who, unhappy with the way women are treated on the force, is conflicted about her career; and rookie cop Matthew Jackson, an introspective young man and the product of a mixed-race marriage, whom Hatcher looks down on.
The murder scene is in a disturbing state of disarray, suggesting that Rosalie had fought to the bitter end. Then Hall discovers a video camera nestled high on a bookshelf. Had the victim taped some of her clients during their sexual liaisons?
As the investigation proceeds, so does business inside the Beltway. President Burton Pyle is running for reelection. His opponent, consummate politician Robert Colgate, is expected to easily defeat Pyle, whose administration has been rife with corruption and scandal. Colgate, though, is not without cracks in his slick exterior. Rumors swirl about his failing marriage and various dalliances. Moreover, there’s no love lost between the two candidates: The campaign has morphed into one of the most distasteful and nasty in memory.
Then, on a bright Saturday afternoon on the Washington Mall, the daughter of Colgate’s closest friend is kidnapped. The abduction rocks the nation’s capital, but no one is prepared for the bombshell about to hit the city, an explosive development that erupts when Detectives Hall and Jackson uncover a shocking connection between the kidnapping and the Canó case-and a killer whom no one will see coming.
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