The Mason's Mark: Love and Death in the Tower

Claire Wilding has had quite a day on her new job. After all, nobody expects to find a dead body in the George Washington National Masonic Memorial!  But there's Claire, her first day of work and there's a corpse on the observation platform - one that seems to be connected to the Freemasons, George Washington, black ops and hidden treasure. And in the middle of all that there are two men. One is Senator Gideon Bliss, whose agenda is definitely murky, but he is her new lover. And the second one is Detective Ernest Angle.  He is crushing on her and willing to tell her all about the case. What's a girl to do when everything around her seems to be a part of a conspiracy?

"The Mason's Mark" is a thriller filled with lots of interesting details about Freemasons and George Washington, the first president of the United States of America. While the focus of the story is on the suspense subplot, Gideon and Claire do get enough screen time together. Therein lies the problem. Their interactions seem pretty awkward, especially when they're being intimate (where the writing is a mixture of purple and explicit prose). Also, most of the history that pertains to the story is dumped on the reader - lots of lectures. 

All in all, an interesting premise with a rather intriguing cast of characters - and unfortunately, a novel that doesn't quite rise to its initial potential.  

Ana Smith