False Profits - Hardcover

Smiley, Patricia

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0892967900 ISBN 13: 9780892967902

Publisher: Mysterious Press, 2004

Synopsis

Living with her mother after her divorce, business manager Tucker Sinclair works toward a hoped-for partnership by evaluating an expansion scheme, but when she declares the plan unsound, she is accused of someone else's unethical practices, a situation that is worsened when a dead body is discovered on Venice beach. A first novel. 20,000 first printing.

About this title

About the Author:

Patricia Smiley (Los Angeles, CA) is a bestselling mystery author whose short fiction has appeared in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine and Two of the Deadliest, an anthology edited by Elizabeth George. Patricia has taught writing classes at various conferences throughout the US and Canada, and she served on the board of directors of the Southern California Chapter of Mystery Writers of America and as president of Sisters in Crime/Los Angeles.

From Publishers Weekly:

An engaging, down-to-earth heroine—a successful L.A. management consultant with a charming weakness for her Porsche Boxster—more than compensates for a predictable story line in Smiley's first novel. When investors accuse Tucker Sinclair of doctoring a business plan, they approach Sinclair's boss and mentor, Gordon Aames, and demand their $11 million back. Sinclair goes in search of the plan's primary author, a brash neurologist, Milton Polk, and discovers not her elusive doctor but a policeman with a Polaroid of the dead Polk. In an unlikely scenario, Sinclair injects herself into a charity luncheon given by the highly suspicious Wade Covington, a powerful man connected both to Aames and the murder victim. Clarification of Covington's murky relationship to Polk and of a convoluted insurance scam take up most of Sinclair's energy, though she finds time for sparkless visits with her ex-husband and skirmishes with her Aunt Sylvia, who's determined to get her hands on Sinclair's beachfront cottage. A romantic interest appears on the horizon in the last few pages, a clear indicator that this book hopes to be the first in a series. With fresher devices and plot turns, it should be a pleasure to see Sinclair in action again.
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About this edition

• Publisher: Mysterious Press
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0892967900
• ISBN 13: 9780892967902
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 304