Engaño: A Carson Action Thriller
Lance Charnes
Lance Charnes
Gun oil and sunscreen don’t mix. Disgraced ex-cop Carson is working off the huge loans her father failed to pay back to a Russian mafiya godfather. So when the mobster asks her to round up Viktoriya Baranova, the wayward daughter of a Russian cabinet minister, Carson doesn’t get to say “no.” It should be easy. Viktoriya’s splashed all over Instagram as she parties along Spain’s Mediterranean coast. Find her, toss her on an airplane, and send her home to Daddy: no problem, and a chunk of Carson’s debt disappears. As Carson plunges into the lifestyles of the rich and idle, the world starts going to hell around her. She’s tailed by gangsters. Drug dealers start dying around Viktoriya and her friends. When a hit team tries to kill them all, Carson realizes Viktoriya’s posse is up to way more than scoring likes on social media. From the megaclubs of Ibiza to the vineyards of Barcelona, Carson’s dancing a fine line between killer raves and raving killers… and the music’s about to...
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The Collection
Lance Charnes
Lance Charnes
Four years ago, what Matt Friedrich learned at work put him in prison. Yesterday, it earned him a job. Tomorrow, it may kill him. Matt learned all the angles at his old Los Angeles gallery: how to sell stolen art, how to "enhance" a painting's history, how to help buyers hide their purchases from their spouses or the IRS. He made a load of money doing it – money he poured into the lawyer who worked a plea deal with the U.S. Attorney. Matt's out on parole and hopelessly in debt with no way out... until a shadowy woman from his past recruits him to find a cache of stolen art that could be worth millions. Now Matt's in Milan, impersonating a rich collector looking for deals. He has twenty days to track down something that may not exist for a boss who knows a lot more than she's telling. He's saddled with a tough-talking partner who may be out to screw him and up against a shady gallerist whom Matt tried to send to prison. His parole officer doesn't know he's left the U.S....
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Chasing Clay
Lance Charnes
Lance Charnes
It’s pure white, deep blue… and dirty all over. Nam Ton ware – centuries-old ceramics from Southeast Asia’s Golden Triangle – captivated the DeWitt Agency’s tech-tycoon client. Now Immigration and Customs Enforcement is on his case for buying smuggled antiquities. To get immunity, he’s hired the agency to run an off-books investigation into Nam Ton’s source. Disgraced ex-L.A. gallerist and ex-con Matt Friedrich is in charge. If he finishes within sixty days, he’ll earn an early end to his probation. If he doesn’t, he may go back to prison for bending the federal criminal code into a pretzel. Soon enough, Matt’s in San Francisco, getting tight with Savannah, the client’s beautiful art advisor, to scam his way into the smuggling operation. As the burglary, blackmail, tax evasion and customs fraud piles up and Matt finds himself sandwiched in a federal turf war, he realizes he’s in way over his head with no good way out. And that’s before he ends up in a real live jungle. Matt’s...
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Zrada
Lance Charnes
Lance Charnes
Two priceless paintings. Two million euros. A civil war. What could go wrong? The DeWitt Agency assigned disgraced ex-cop Carson a simple job: carry two briefcases of cash to swap for two artworks stolen from a German museum. Except nothing's simple in the Donbass, the breakaway Ukrainian region overrun by militias, warlords, and bandits. After a brutal zrada – betrayal – Carson finds herself alone and hunted forty miles behind the front lines with half the money, one of the paintings, and a huge target hung on her back. The militia behind the exchange thinks she blew up their deal and wants the money and her hide. Her co-workers were in on the double-cross. And the Agency can't send help into the hottest war in Europe. Carson's never been one to wait to be rescued. She hires Galina— a tough local with a harrowing past and a taste for revenge— to help her cut through every checkpoint, freelance army, crooked cop, and firefight between her and the West....
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Stealing Ghosts
Lance Charnes
Lance Charnes
Dorotea DeVillardi is ninety-one years old, gorgeous, and worth a fortune. Matt Friedrich's going to steal her. The Nazis seized Dorotea's portrait from her Viennese family, then the Soviets stole it from the Nazis. Now it's in the hands of a Russian oligarch. Dorotea's corporate-CEO grandson played by the legal rules to get her portrait back, but he struck out. So he's hired the DeWitt Agency to get it for him – and he doesn't care how they do it. Now Matt and Carson, his ex-cop partner, have to steal Dorotea's portrait from a museum so nobody knows it's gone, and somehow launder its history so the client doesn't have to hide it forever. The client's saddled them with a babysitter: Dorotea's granddaughter Julie, who may have designs on Matt as well as the painting. As if this wasn't hard enough, it looks like someone else is gunning for the same museum – and he may know more about Matt and Carson's plans than he should. Matt went to prison for the bad things he did...
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