Brian McGrory Books In Order

Jack Flynn Books In Order

  1. The Incumbent (2000)
  2. The Nominee (2002)
  3. Dead Line (2003)
  4. Strangled (2007)

Non fiction

  1. Buddy (2012)

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Brian McGrory Books Overview

The Incumbent

It’s twelve days before the presidential election, and someone wants The Incumbent eliminated from the race forever. For Jack Flynn, Washington correspondent for the Boston Record, it’s a chance for the type of exclusive story about which most reporters can only dream: a round of golf with President Clayton Hutchins just days before he stands in front of voters in what has been the closest race for the White House in decades. But events on the links take a surprising turn. On the tenth tee, the president, confident of renewing his mandate, offers Jack the job of press secretary in his new administration. Minutes later, shots are fired. The president is wounded. Jack is caught in the hail of bullets. And the gunman lies dead nearby, taken out by the Secret Service. As he recuperates in the hospital, Jack receives an anonymous telephone call about the shooting, warning him that ‘nothing is as it seems.’ Using his considerable journalistic skills, Jack sets forth on an investigation that takes him from a remote militia compound in Idaho to the inner sanctums of the federal government and which forces him to face a devastating personal tragedy he has been unable to confront for a year. Along the way, with his bosses at the newspaper hounding him for daily scoops, the White House urging him to accept the president’s job offer, and a fetching female FBI agent breathing down his neck, his anonymous source continues to contact him with new clues and new warnings. But just as he seems to be getting close to the truth, Jack Flynn unwittingly becomes front page news himself. In the tradition of the bestselling Washington thrillers Absolute Power and The Tenth Justice, combining riveting authenticity with a wry narrative sensibility, The Incumbent hums with the vitality of the newsroom and bristles with the excitement of the final stages of a presidential election campaign. It marks the debut of a major talent.

The Nominee

Washington press insider Brian McGrory, whose debut novel, ‘The Incumbent,’ soared onto the national bestseller lists amid rave reviews, is back with a second sizzling political thriller featuring Jack Flynn, the intrepid newspaperman with the wry turn of phrase. News is crackling all around him when Jack Flynn, ace reporter for ‘The Boston Record,’ is summoned to a secret meeting with his esteemed publisher, Paul Ellis. Ellis sadly reveals that the newspaper they both love, owned by his family for more than a century, is the target of a hostile takeover bid by a shadowy corporate chain. Desperate, he asks for Jack’s help. Already on the brink of a hot political scoop, Jack sets out in pursuit of a hidden truth. But that very day his life is threatened. ‘The Record’ is beset by horrific tragedy. And a death from years ago no longer appears what it once seemed. Now Jack is forced to question not only the words published in his own paper but the relationships that have been the bedrock of his life in particular those with his gorgeous ex girlfriend, who writes for a rival tabloid, and with the venerable ‘Record’ reporter Robert Fitzgerald, Jack’s longtime mentor. And all along, Jack is sitting on a goldmine of information that could torpedo the president’s controversial nomination of the Massachusetts governor to be the next U.S. Attorney General. As he balances on a tightrope of personal and professional peril, shuttling from the swamps of central Florida to the corridors of Congress, then back to the alleyways of Boston, Jack is left with just two questions: Will his newspaper survive long enough for him to tell his story? Will he?Combining breakneck speed andtension packed plotting with the insights of a consummate political insider, Brian McGrory explores the ethics and direction of modern journalism and analyzes how, in this era of media saturation, reputations are made and too often destroyed. ‘The Nominee,’ peopled with irresistible characters that linger long after the last page is turned, confirms his position at the forefront of today’s most talented young suspense writers.

Dead Line

A reporter’s hunt for the truth becomes a race for

survival in this third acclaimed Jack Flynn thriller from national bestselling author Brian McGrory.

Dead Line

After a months long dearth of leads, newspaperman Jack Flynn receives an incendiary tip the once in a career kind of information that every reporter craves. Suddenly he’s immersed in an explosive story of the Irish mob, the estranged son of mayor Daniel Harkins, and an audacious museum heist. But no sooner does The Boston Record publish his revelations than a beautiful young woman, the mysterious whistleblower, is murdered. Shattered by his role in the death of an innocent, questioning the integrity of his chosen profession, Jack must now also fear for his own life as he tears the lid off a dangerous citywide conspiracy. And with a story of this magnitude, there’s no turning back…
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Strangled

Deadly and deep seated political conspiracies are nothing new to Jack Flynn, the popular lead reporter of the Boston Record. But in Strangled, he finds himself in the middle of a case that everyone thought had closed forty years ago the Boston Strangler. From the summer of 1962 to the winter of 1964, eleven women were Strangled to death in their homes. The city had been panic stricken. Dog pounds were cleaned out. Locksmiths worked twenty hour days. The streets emptied after dark. Single women set up phone trees to check on each other’s safety. Then, a year after the eleventh murder, the city breathed a heavy sigh of relief when convicted sex offender Albert DeSalvo confessed to the killings. Eight years later, he was stabbed to death in prison, forever ridding the world of the man who had terrorized a city. Or so everyone thought.

Boston, present day. A series of murders has occurred in which all the victims, all female, have been Strangled and left with markers eerily reminiscent of those once left by the ‘Phantom Fiend’ garish bows tied around their necks and their bodies ghoulishly positioned to greet investigators as they entered the crime scene.

In typical fashion, the police and local politicians have turned on their publicity machine full throttle in an attempt to cool any rumors about the possible return of the Strangler. Little do they know that Flynn is receiving letters from the killer himself, thrusting the newsman between the threats of a madman and several secretive, uncooperative officials, who are tied to the original case. With the lives of innocent women on the line, he must use his keen journalistic skills to determine whether or not this is a copycat on the loose, or if Albert DeSalvo was, in fact, not quite the fiend everyone so easily believed him to be. Is it possible that the Boston Strangler was never captured and that he’s been lurking in the shadows, waiting to kill again?

Using fiction to examine the horrifying details of the Boston Strangler case and the possible outcomes of its investigation, McGrory has written an intelligent thriller crackling with newsroom energy and chilling suspense.

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