White Collar Crime Fiction

There is a razor thin line between good and evil. Michael Falau walks that line every day.... “The System” has again called on Michael Falau to take on a mission of epic proportions. Tristan Duke is a billionaire 30-year-old that took wall street by storm. Living a life of power and extravagance Duke was unmatched in his lust for greed and power. But then it all came tumbling down. His fortune was built on a house of cards and the Ponzi scheme he set up was discovered. That’s when Michael Falau got the call to go in and bring Tristan Duke to justice.

When he’s recruited by Walker & Company, the most distinguished investment bank on Wall Street, starry-eyed MBA Richard Blum can’t believe his luck. Sadly, his fantasy world comes to a crashing end when he learns that some crooks have a taste for Gucci loafers and Saville Row suits. CEO Jack Grass and Mickey Steinberg, head of Mergers and Acquisitions, are running an insider trading ring right under his nose. Even worse, to keep the Feds off their trail, they made sure Richard appeared to be a key player.

While tracking down his tormentor, the author encounters an improbable cast of characters that includes an elocution teacher with ill-fitting dentures, a gang of faux-royal swindlers, a crime investigator with "paper in his blood", and a monocled grand master of the Knights of Malta. Yet for all its global exoticism and comic exuberance, Kurzweil's riveting account is, at its core, a heartfelt and suspenseful narrative about the "parallel lives" of a victim and his abuser.

Former Wall Street whiz and current convict Mickey Steinberg is nearing the end of his three-year sentence at Yankton - the cushy country club prison where he's enjoyed celebrity status - and he's ready to get out and get back on top. He doesn't have the resources he once did, but he's already hatched a new plan to sell a forgery of a stolen Van Gogh painting through the shady underground art market. He and his new partner, the smooth-talking Paul Reece, have a mark in mind: The sleazy con-man art dealer who swooped in on Mickey's beloved ex-wife after he was locked up. But with his old partner, Jack Grass, hell-bent on revenge and his pre-prison life closed to him, it won't be easy.

Today's high-flying, high-rolling conglomarateurs and corporate raiders are a tame lot compared to their immediate predecessors. The most notorious of these is Robert Vesco, the Kingfish himself, who in 1973 fled the United States accused of looting $250 million from Investors Overseas Services. Now, in this riveting account, noted author Arthur Herzog tells the astounding story of this high school dropout from Detroit, who parlayed cunning, ambition, a brilliant mind, and above all, other people's gullibility and money into a vast financial empire.