Hillary

At the start of Edgar-finalist Buffa’s third thriller featuring Sen. Bobby Hart (after 2010’s The Grand Master), U.S. president Robert Constable dies in a Manhattan hotel in the company of a woman not his wife. Constable’s minders at the scene scramble to remove all evidence of the tryst. Though officials say Constable died of a heart attack (alone), his widow, Hillary, suspects her husband was murdered, possibly at the behest of a secretive French banking institution, the Four Sisters. When Bobby pays his respects to Hillary, she asks him to investigate a possible conspiracy. Bobby travels to France, where he meets the head of the Four Sisters, Jean de la Valette, who’s more philosopher than financier. Those who can verify the conspiracy are discredited and killed, and Bobby finds himself framed for their deaths. Occasionally, the book threatens to veer into Dan Brown territory; the final revelations feel rushed and unearned, and Hillary isn’t much of a presence. (Oct.)