The heart of this wonderfully suspenseful caper is a fantastic multimillion-dollar fraud. The brilliant young author, Jonathan Kwitny, here tells the tale of master swindler Michael Carmody in a shakedown so ingeniously achieved the reader is more inclined to marvel than condemn. Besides, in the end, Carmody gets his just deserts. En route we are held in thrall by the puzzles and threats Carmody poses for Frank Scanion, newspaperman turned FBI agent, then private sleuth. What Scanlon confronts - and teh reader can relish his adventures as the novel's chapters alternate between Scanlon's story of prusuit adn the actual events - is the swindling of the Quincy Corporation, a company perfectly set up for Carmody's larcenous skills.