The 13th Target

Mark De Castrique

Poisoned Pen Press, Dec 31, 2011 - Fiction - 448 pages

From the author of Blackman's Coffin, one of Amazon's Top 10 Mysteries for 2008

When his wife dies of ovarian cancer, Russell Mullins quits the Secret Service to repurpose his life. He joins a Washington D.C. private protection company and is assigned to guard Paul Luguire, a Federal Reserve executive and its chief liaison with the U.S. Treasury.

Mullins and Luguire form a strong friendship. So when a police detective calls in the middle of the night with word of Luguire's suicide, Mullins doesn't buy it. His doubts are reinforced by Amanda Church, a former Secret Service colleague now in the Federal Reserve's cyber-security unit. She uncovered a suspicious financial transaction initiated by Luguire only days before his death. He authorized unrequested funds to be transferred from the Federal Reserve to a regional bank.

Even stranger, after Luguire's suicide, Amanda finds the transaction has been erased from Federal Reserve records. The regional bank now shows the money wired from an offshore account in the name of Russell Mullins. Someone is setting Rusty up. And when the bank president is murdered, Mullins rockets to the top of the suspect list.

As a tenacious reporter develops leads, Mullins follows a conspiratorial trail of killing and kidnapping that leads from a shadowy mastermind to the possible destruction of America's financial system. In an age of Wall Street meltdowns and downgrading of the U.S. credit rating, the secretive Federal Reserve has a pivotal role.

Twelve targets are known. The clock is ticking. What, or who, is the thirteenth?

What people are saying

LibraryThing Review

User Review  - cathyskye - LibraryThing

First Line: "Rusty. Have you got any money on you?" When Russell (Rusty) Mullins' wife dies of ovarian cancer, he feels a real need to take a different direction in his life. Ending his career in the ...

THE 13TH TARGET

User Review  - Kirkus

A bodyguard turns shamus when his charge is the victim of a suspicious shooting.An oblique prologue involving an anonymous superrich cabal hints at a grand plot involving the Federal Reserve and the ...

About the author

Mark de Castrique grew up in the mountains of western North Carolina where many of his novels are set. He's a veteran of the television and film production industry, has served as an adjunct professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte teaching The American Mystery, and he's a frequent speaker and workshop leader. He and his wife, Linda, live in Charlotte, North Carolina. www.markdecastrique.com

Bibliographic information

• Title: The 13th Target
• Author: Mark De Castrique
• Edition: large print
• Publisher: Poisoned Pen Press, 2011
• ISBN: 1590586166, 9781590586167
• Length: 448 pages
• Subjects: Fiction / Mystery & Detective / Amateur Sleuth; Fiction / Mystery & Detective / Hard-Boiled; Fiction / Thrillers / Crime