Supreme Justice

At the start of this unsatisfying political thriller set a decade in the future, two masked gunmen invade the Verdict Chophouse, a Washington, D.C., restaurant, where Supreme Court Associate Justice Henry Venter, who led the successful effort to overturn Roe v. Wade under President Gregory Watson Bennett (Obama’s Republican successor), and other top government officials are eating unguarded. One of the robbers shoots Venter dead after the judge makes a sudden move. When former Secret Service agent Joseph Reeder, who took a bullet for Bennett, views a video of the murder, he concludes that Venter was the target all along in what was meant to look like a robbery gone wrong. Reeder joins a task force investigating the crime. Other implausible security lapses and a completely predictable ending add up to a work well below Collins’s best, like his Nate Heller series (Ask Not, etc.). [em]Agent: Dominick Abel, Dominick Abel Literary Agency. (June) [/em]