Body Scissors

Presidential hopeful Dan Markham hires Tom Bethany to check out J. Alden Kellicott, the man he wants for Secretary of State. Bethany, a self-styled 'security consultant,' is an insider with his own jaundiced view of the corridors of power. Turning Kellicott's life upside down to see if anything scandalous falls out, Bethany finds the Harvard professor's record to be flawless - except for his daughter Emily, who went from Wellesley drop-out to coked-up go-go dancer to homicide victim. How does a beautiful well-connected girl go so haywire? Why? Bethany starts probing in Boson's Combat Zone, a world of drugs, prostitution, kiddie porn parlors, and would-be assassins - one of whom tries to slice Bethany to ribbons.

When no hard evidence turns up, campaign headquarters urges him to drop his fruitless investigation. But Bethany can't ignore his own narrow escape from death, or the very different portrait of Emily that has emerged. Somewhere between the impeccable preserves of Cambridge and the gutter world of the Combat Zone, the truth is buried as deep as a New England snowfall...