Vegas Snap

VEGAS SNAP: A Tale of Greed & Graves … Set in glitzy Las Vegas, this mystery novel unravels two grotesque crimes. Relive the heady days of the U.S. real estate bubble when greedy bankers and brokers dealt painful fraud. Look inside the mind of a Vegas con man and watch him first gain, then exploit, the trust of an investor group, one nest egg at a time. The book’s theme says it all: Those seduced by greed can lose not only their money but also their sanity and soul.
THE COPS: One cranky, one wistful. Meet Detective Frank Stetson and partner Billy Snow, alter egos and feisty foils for each other. Stetson is a grumpy, burly ex-linebacker who barks at his team. Snow is the softer side, witty and cool, but still a tough and solid sleuth. Billy moonlights as a screenwriter.
THE BODIES: Con artist Roger Blackstone and his brother Walter, bagman for their real estate scams. Walter is found headless and hanging upside down, limp as a jumbo shrimp, from a freeway billboard. Cringe when Roger pushes one scam too far and gawk as his mark goes berserk and unleashes a truly bizarre weapon.
THE CLUES: Follow the cops as they decipher clues from as small as a 20-dollar bill with cryptic words and digits to as large as a luxury yacht docked at an unknown harbor. Discover more clues: Telltale words whispered to a prostitute; a padlocked storage space behind an artist’s gallery; and a creepy skull encased in a bowling ball. When the skull ball shows up, it is indeed a clue but presumed at first to be a prank.
THE KILLERS: One accidental, one vengeful. Both snapped. Shadow Stetson and Snow as they hound these culprits, combing a construction site of ghost condos, plumbing the facade of a dusty mining town to search for the con man’s stolen cash, and snaring a fugitive in a chase that climaxes atop Hoover Dam. And channel Michael Connelly’s Black Echo while you squint in the dark as two suspects are stalked in the dismal flood tunnels beneath the Vegas neon.