cover image Murder on K Street

Murder on K Street

Margaret Truman. Ballantine Books, $24.95 (336pp) ISBN 978-0-345-49886-1

Truman's 23rd Capital Crimes novel (after 2006's Murder at the Opera) offers little suspense and even less insight into the wheelings and dealings of contemporary Washington, D.C. One day, U.S. Senator Lyle Simmons, a presidential aspirant, arrives home to find his wife, Jeanette, murdered in their foyer. As the police investigate, fissures in the public facade of the Simmons's marriage appear, and Simmons's oldest friend, retired detective Phil Rotondi, who lost Jeanette to Simmons during college, wrestles with whether he should share all he knows about the politician with the authorities. Frequent flashbacks to those college days disrupt any narrative flow, and the florid and uninspired writing (""Washington! Was there any other place in the world with as much intrigue on a daily basis, and with so much at stake?"") won't lead readers to confuse this mediocre thriller with the Machiavellian plotting of writers mining similar ground such as David Baldacci.