Her entry begins:My next book involves scammers and fraud, so I’ve been devouring books about con-men, grifters and cult leaders for well over a year. I read The Man in the Rockefeller Suit by Mark Seal, the story of Christian Gerhartsreiter. A German expat, he conned his way through the States for thirty years; during the last twelve he convinced uber-rich and not-wealthy Americans alike that he was a descendent of the John D. Rockefeller, with all the riches that family commands. Oh, and it turns out he also murdered a few people to do it.About Every Kind of Wicked, from the publisher:
Impeccably dressed and incredibly intelligent, Gerhartsreiter had been born in 1961, a slightly pampered boy who grew into a good-looking teenager, intelligent and charming. He might have been exceedingly full of himself, but what good-looking young man isn’t? He happened to meet an American couple on vacation, invited them to his parents’ for dinner, then used their names on an application to become an exchange student in the U.S. He actually...[read on]
In this mesmerizing new novel from bestselling author Lisa Black, the discovery of a young man’s corpse leads forensics expert Maggie Gardiner and Cleveland detective Jack Renner into a dark and dangerous web of lies...Learn more about the book and author at Lisa Black's website.
Life and death have brought Maggie Gardiner full circle, back to the Erie Street Cemetery where she first entered Jack Renner’s orbit. Eight months ago, she learned what Jack would do in the name of justice. More unsettling still, she discovered how farshe would go to cover his tracks. Now a young man sprawls atop a snowy grave, his heart shredded by a single wound. A key card in the victim’s wallet leads to the local university’s student housing—and to a grieving girlfriend with an unsettling agenda.
Maggie’s struggle to appease her conscience is complicated by her ex-husband, Rick, who’s convinced that Jack is connected to a series of vigilante killings. Also a homicide detective, Rick investigates what seems like a routine overdose on Cleveland’s West Side; but here, too, the appearance belies a deeper truth.
Rick’s case and Jack’s merge onto the trail of a shadowy, pill-pushing physician who is everywhere and nowhere at once, while Maggie and Jack uncover a massive financial shakedown hiding in plain sight. And when Rick’s bloody fingerprint is found at another murder scene, Maggie’s world comes undone in a violent, irreversible torrent of events.
The Page 69 Test: That Darkness.
My Book, The Movie: Unpunished.
The Page 69 Test: Unpunished.
My Book, The Movie: Perish.
The Page 69 Test: Perish.
The Page 69 Test: Suffer the Children.
Writers Read: Lisa Black.
--Marshal Zeringue
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