In Bill Lewers's According to Law, election officer Darcy Gibbons works as an election officer alongside colleague Rickey Hughes at a polling station during the primaries and congressional race where her boyfriend, Jeff Palucci, is running for a House of Representatives seat. While Jeff seeks the Republican nomination, Darcy supervises voting procedures at the precinct, insisting that election rules be followed by all the officers. When the chief election officer begins advising voters not to select a candidate who withdrew from the race, Darcy reports the situation through official channels, placing her in conflict with her supervisors. Months later, she returns to the same precinct during the general election as news coverage reveals that she had been present at the January 6 protest, bringing new scrutiny to both her work and Jeff’s campaign.

According to Law is the sixth book in Bill Lewers's Gatekeepers of Democracy series, but it reads perfectly well as a standalone. While fiction, there's no question that what the characters cover, and what happens off the page, are eerily similar. I really love Darcy's arc. She has a bona fide political past, having attended the infamous January 6 rally, and we see her defense of voters subjected to racial profiling, even though giving them the boot could help Jeff win. Lewers weaves in a surprising connection and a twist that I did not see coming. Lewers gets the message across that there are election officials who are real heroes, and shows us why, instead of dipping into exposition. With realistic and straightforward writing, readers interested in election administration, political fiction, and a side of romance will adore this series. Very highly recommended.

According to Law (Gatekeepers of Democracy) by Bill Lewers is a fascinating insight into the mechanics of the election process in the United States and the unswerving commitment of its participants to keep it fair and above board. Darcy Gibbons is an unashamed Republican, the girlfriend of a Republican candidate for Congress, and one of many who participated in the storming of Congress on January 6th, 2021. She fiercely believed the 2020 election was stolen and was determined to uphold the election laws to ensure it could not happen again. As an active believer and participant in the election process and electoral law, Darcy has been involved in previous elections as part of the teams that man and supervise polling places in her hometown. She fervently believes it is the electoral staff's role to uphold the laws surrounding voting and the entire election process. But, she will come to question the silliness, inconvenience, and perhaps even the corruption of those who enacted the laws.

According to Law is a well-written, cogent, and fascinating portrayal of the day-to-day mechanics of the US electoral process, especially fascinating for someone like myself living overseas. Bill Lewers is an expert on elections, having participated in them himself, and this shines through every page, especially in the minutiae of the various roles, rules, and regulations surrounding elections. I was especially interested in the partisan participants involved in the process to oversee the election and ensure the rules were complied with, and that neither side was disadvantaged. Readers will be stunned to learn the amount of organization and bureaucracy required to hold free and fair elections and the stringent rules to ensure fairness is maintained at all times. This is just one of a series of novels based around elections, and although there are links to previous characters, the author does an excellent job of dropping in information and backstory. This story can be read as a standalone. I found it both entertaining from a fictional standpoint and also educational and informative from a factual standpoint, which is a huge compliment to the author. I highly recommend this book.