Zorn is called to the Reflecting Pool near the White House when the body of a woman is found floating there. Since the victim's lifeless blue eyes remind Zorn of those of his dead sister Rose, who died many years before, he takes the case to heart. He discovers her name is Sandra Wilcox and she was a Secret Service agent assigned to the President's personal detail, and in the few years prior, to that of the First Lady. As Marko digs, he starts getting stone-walled from every direction. He is approached by an FBI agent named Arora Lovelace, who is also investigating Wilcox's apparent murder and the pair begin to work together, although in truth, Marko pretty much flies solo no matter what he says.
To make matters worse, Zorn also sort of works on the side for Sister Grace, a 90-something-year-old black lady who runs the largest gang in the city. As it so happens, Sister Grace's grandson, Cloud, is getting a little high and mighty and Sister Grace thinks he will soon take her out and take control of the gang. What's a lady gangster to do, but to hire Zorn to kill Cloud first. Is it shady? Yes, but once more, Zorn likes expensive things and Sister Grace has him over a barrel with what she knows about him. Plus, Zorn tangled with Cloud's woman, Mariana, a few years back and got himself a bullet in his side for his trouble, so he and Cloud already have beef. It doesn't hurt that Cloud's number 2, Lamont, wants to be the big man as well and might want to take Cloud out himself. It could complicate matters or assist Zorn in his task.
Zorn soon discovers that Sandra Wilcox's brother was mixed up with a homegrown terrorist group called the Brotherhood of Aryan Dawn, run by a creep named Sweet Daddy. Could be they want to assassinate the President or just flood the streets of D.C. with high-powered weapons, or both, but if Zorn doesn't get to the bottom of this case, hopefully without getting killed, things are going to turn really ugly, really fast. To top things off, Zorn's supervisor has assigned him a new partner, a complete rookie named Kenneth Blake. When Blake shows some initiative in the case and gets himself in hot water with the wrong people, that's just one more thing for Zorn to deal with, but one false move could land the kid in an early grave.
Marko Zorn is an interesting character, but I will say that there were so many other characters that were introduced from different policing and governmental agencies, that I had a difficult time remembering who was who when they were mentioned. Fortunately, Eskin does a good job of reminding you who pertinent characters were when needed.
The Reflecting Pool wraps up tidily, but does leave a few stragglers, presumably to be dealt with in future books. As for what's next for Marko Zorn, I'm not sure, but it probably involves his lime green Jaguar and a pretty woman, at the very least.
