Stephen Gore's novel title, Power Blind, is a good fit for the story. On its surface, readers get the idea that power makes politicians blind to ethics and legal risk. Certainly they protect themselves with rationalizations of expediency and delusions of grandeur. They create their bridges as they cross them. A second meaning of the title sets the stage for the mystery that Graham Gage, an international private detective, sets out to solve. Individuals and corporations with large amounts of cash to work with and manipulation of government power as a goal, set up obscure blinds from which they launder cash to pay off politicians. The biggest goal of all is to influence the Supreme Court judge selections who will write the law of the capitalist land. The U. S. Constitution then becomes a binding document with little connection to originalism.

The mystery for Gage begins when the brother-in-law of Viz his chief investigator is shot in cold blood on the streets of San Francisco. Charlie Palmer was a lawyer who became a fixer for politicians and wealthy corporation officers who got themselves involved in difficult personal and corporate situations usually because of unethical or immoral acts. Charlie was in way over his head prior to being shot, trying to fix problems at national political and international financial levels. He actually started gathering evidence of wrong doing, perhaps to ease his conscience after years of blackmail and intimidation tactics he used in his fixer role. The assault on Palmer gives Gage a good look at corruption involving the White House, Senate, Supreme Court, major corporations, offshore banking, bribes, torture, and murder. There are so many layers of deceit that Gage is blind to the complicated causes of the violence that stops Charlie's career.

This is a very good thriller that is relevant to current questionable activity by politicians at all levels and surprising Supreme Court activity culminating in the Justice Roberts decision. There is good action by a variety of interesting characters that takes place from coast to coast in the U. S. and from the Caymans to India on the international stage. It is interesting to consider the huge amount of cash that people and corporations are holding today, rather than reinvesting in companies, and how much free-ranging power that cash can buy. ( )