Murder Inside the Beltway (Capital Crimes Series #24) Book

Rosalie Curzon, 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 Curzon case and a killer whom no one will see coming.

Publishers Weekly

In the workmanlike 24th and presumably last Capital Crimes novel (after Murder on K Street) from bestseller Truman (1924-2008), the murder of escort Rosalie Curzon, who was savagely beaten before being strangled, panics her many high-powered clients after the local police find she'd been videotaping her sessions. The detectives on the case-Walter Hatcher, a racist dinosaur mulling over retirement, and his two younger assistants, naïve Matt Jackson, who's shocked that some of his colleagues are on the take, and Mary Hall, who's secretly involved with Jackson-are walking clichés. The probe takes on national implications when rumors circulate that presidential challenger Robert Colgate, who's been dogged by allegations of infidelity, was one of Curzon's clients. Readers should be prepared for some clunky prose (e.g., a character's face is described as "a series of small, finely chiseled granite blocks covered by a coal-black membrane pulled tight"). (Nov.)