The Imperiled Impostor: *Deception without Detection*

The Chief Executive Officer of a large private corporation has the Board of Director votes to thwart a buyout/takeover bid from a corporate raider. However, several members of the BOD will stop at nothing to ensure the bid is successful, including hiring assassins to kill the CEO to eliminate his deciding, negative votes. If the CEO is absent from the board meeting, the corporate raider will be successful.

Complications arise when the young CEO is temporarily incapacitated by an automobile accident caused by his own immaturity and recklessness. To provide the necessary negative votes and protect the corporation from the raider, its astute Chief Operating Officer, governed by his 25+ years of loyal and significant service, covertly hires a look-alike actor to pose as the CEO. The impostor has to successfully deceive the CEO's BOD members, staff, friends, acquaintances, and a TV-viewing audience for at least two months. To further the deception, a young attractive actress is hired to pose as the impostor's platonic girlfriend.

Therein lies the plot. The impostor plays his role so well that there are a number of attempts to kill him, thinking that he is the real CEO. What follows are multiple, ruthless attempts to kill the CEO impostor to ensure the corporate raider's success. The impostor's life is further jeopardized by an avenging ex-convict who blames the CEO for the death of his sister.

Throughout all the dangers the impostor must not break character. His mission remains the same: Deception without Detection. "No matter what happens, no one must know!"

This fast-paced story takes place across many venues: the Big Sur coastal area; the snow-covered mountains of Utah; a cabin in the Adirondacks; mega-yacht moorings at St. Tropez, Nice, and Monaco along the French Riviera; a New York City horse-drawn carriage ride; a rustic cabin in Sleepy Hollow, New York; a retirement village in Arkansas; a movie premiere; a late-night TV show; and corporate guest lodges in California, 1000 Islands, and Florida.

The theme of the Imperiled Impostor is the conflict between good and evil, with this additional consideration and question from a Machiavellian treatise: "does the end justify the means". In the story, does deceit and deception justify the final "good" result? The story also depicts the redemption of a gifted and capable person who had been wasting his life in self-indulgence and self-pity.

Charles Lake's career was in information technology. He is a nonagenarian who writes as a pastime. The Imperiled Impostor is his first novel. He has also published an opera book and two short story anthologies. A 1952 Texas A&M University graduate, he and his wife Joyce live in Richardson, Texas.