Black Maps

by PeterSpiegelman (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  2004

  $6.25

  One day Merchant's Worldwide Bank ceased to exist. Its creditors discovered what its employees had known for some time, that the firm's equity had never existed and that its sole purpose was as a money-laundering centre for organized crime. Now there is nothing left except an empty building in Manhattan, empty desks and thousands and thousands of files being investigated by FBI criminal investigators. But the most incriminating files have disappeared. At first it is thought that the bank's president, Gerard Nassouli, destroyed them, but eight years after the collapse prominent ex-clients MWB begin to receive blackmail notes demanding millions of dollars or some startling secrets will be revealed. Enter investigator John March, whose life has nearly been destroyed by personal tragedy. His task is to follow the thin lines of evidence that may lead back to the monster manipulator behind the blackmail, a person protected by killers and lost in a dark landscape of lies and deceit.

• Used

  Paperback
  2005

  $3.25

  Years after the personal tragedy that scarred his life, Private Investigator John March lives a twilight existence in Manhattan. He is tough and ruthlessly efficient in his professional life, yet introspective and vulnerable when it comes to his relationships with women. And he struggles daily to maintain a tenuous armed truce with his memories. March's latest case threatens to shatter that brittle peace: his client is a banker who is being blackmailed, and the man's beautiful wife is in the firing line. March's prime suspect is Gerard Nassouli, a monstrous manipulator who vanished years ago. Is Nassouli still a fugitive, or has the law-or one of his many enemies-finally caught up with him? Did he die, or was the vanishing act just one more devilish ploy? Whoever is behind the blackmail is not afraid of killing and March is going to risk everything, including a fragile new happiness as he plunges into a feverish world of greed, corruption and murder.

• Used

  Hardcover
  2004

  $3.25

  A sharp, suspenseful first novel about white collar crime in the world of high finance. John March walked away from his family's venerable merchant bank, for the life of rural deputy sheriff - a life that would explode in personal tragedy and professional disaster. Three years later, March is back in Manhattan, working as a PI and running from his grief and the expectations of his wealthy family. March takes the case of Rick Pierro, a self-made man who has almost everything, and who's in danger of losing it all - to blackmail. Anonymous, poisonous, a threat implicates Pierro in a vast money-laundering scheme currently the focus of a Federal investigation. March follows a bloodstained trail to Wall Street insiders and outcasts, and finds his client may be just the latest victim of a serial extortionist diabolically adept at psychological and physical intimidation. And the more March learns, the more his questions mount about his client, his client's wife, and the secrets hidden beneath the glossy surfaces of their lives. With pared-down, incisive language, brilliantly clarified details of the world of finance (the legal and the illegal), keenly rendered intricacies of character, and a headlong narrative, Black Maps is a riveting debut novel.