This is book 23 of the "Prey" series.

This note contains spoilers for the book.

A Lucas Davenport novel (though the Kidd, Flowers, and Davenport universes have all converged, and Kidd plays a significant role in this book).

What may be planted child porn—an attack on a senator, rather than a crime by the senator, and a mysterious disappearance of a Democratic fixer who has some dirty tricks experience. A Republican governor doesn't think the child porn attack is necessarily real, and wants Davenport to investigate, but very quietly.

We know the fixer was murdered, and by who, and how. We even know of a solid clue he managed to leave before dying. I'm a bit unhappy that the forensic specialist gets the bloodstain but doesn't see that Tubbs had written "TG" in his blood in the car he was taken for burial in.

The Democratic candidate in the Senate race is a narcissist (at the level of narcissistic personality disorder, I mean). She has in fact specifically ordered both murders that occur, and the planting of the child porn. And she wins, which nobody would have expected at the beginning of the race. And she's heading for higher office, the Presidency if she can get it.

Davenport isn't very law-bound. We see him conspiring with the Governor, and with a former Secret Service agent, to perjure himself if necessary to conceal certain information. As always, none of it is to cover up a crime of violence, but it shows a somewhat worrisome ethical compass.

This one also has Kidd and Lauren pull off one last heist—and have to dump quite a lot, possibly the whole heist (millions of dollars worth), in the river when Davenport is getting too close. In fact at the end Davenport sends them a postcard indicating he knows what happened (specifically that he knows Lauren was a high-end professional thief).