Duped

by Stephen Maitland-Lewis

Overview

"Duped delivers the excitement of a heist film with the exotic adventure of a globetrotting spy tale." -Best Thrillers

Sam Marsh's beloved Palm Springs hotel is hanging on by a string. Sam is running out of funds and he's looking down the barrel of a prospect he doesn't want to imagine, selling his stake to his ex-wife. When his friend, Tony, suggests a Nigerian multi-million-dollar deal, Sam forgets that deals that seem too good to be true often are.

In Duped, a novel of high-stake schemes, suspense and sex, Sam and Tony travel to Nigeria to arrange the movement of $37 million to Switzerland. Between his dealings with the nefarious Dr. Kidogo and his run-in with an American lout, who's in Lagos to carry out his own scam, Sam doubts whether the profit he stands to earn is worth it, especially with a new woman in his life, the beautiful and enigmatic Dina.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781956906196
Publisher:	W. Brand Publishing
Publication date:	03/08/2022
Pages:	282
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.64(d)

About the Author

Stephen Maitland-Lewis, a dual citizen of England and the United States, is an award-winning author and a former international investment banker. He has lived and worked in London, Kuwait, Paris, and Munich prior to moving to the United States. Stephen owned a luxury hotel, an award-winning restaurant, and was the director of marketing at a Los Angeles daily newspaper before becoming a full-time writer.

Editorial Reviews

Awards

Emeralds Never Fade won the 2012 Benjamin Franklin Award for Historical

Ambition was a 2013 USA Best Book Awards finalist

Botticelli's Bastard was the 2014 USA Best book awards finalist

"A realistic and engagingly descriptive novel." -Kirkus Reviews

"A deftly crafted, impressively original, and inherently riveting read from first page to last." -Midwest Book Review

From the Publisher

2020-09-17
In this thriller, an entrepreneur joins an international money laundering scheme with dire personal and political consequences.

Sam Marsh seems helpless to stave off losing the hotel/restaurant that he co-owns with his ex-wife, Karin. That is,until Tony Dobbs, an old business associate who’s also under financial duress, offers him a chance to take part in a plan to help three Nigerian officials flee their country with $37 million. Sam and Tony stand to make just over $7 million, but the deal involves some unknowns:George Laney, the head of the U.S. Department of Energy, wants to use instability between Iran and Iraq to pressure the U.S. government to buy Nigerian oil, and his plan involves his cousin, Mark Woods, and two oil tankers that have been hijacked by the Nigerian army. Maitland-Lewis, the author of Emeralds Never Fade (2011), portrays Woods as an unkempt, randy alcoholic who sleeps with his maid, has a beer belly, wears “too-tight and stained trousers,” and has “pungent body odor,” all used as symbols of American-style greed and a general lack of ethics regarding foreign affairs. Sam is also shown to be consumed by monetary desires; Dina, his lover, continually asks him to abandon his plans, but he remains adamant that he needs the money. Still, Maitland-Lewis presents Sam as valiant compared to Woods, Laney, and Ambassador Glanville Tambo, whose luxurious mansion is effectively described as “so glutted with antiques, Woods became claustrophobic.” Sam and Tony’s accommodations in Lagos, meanwhile, are said to be “reminiscent of a crayon-drawing by a young child.” The novel contains plenty of detail about Lagos along the way and about the international politics at the story’s center.

A realistic and engagingly descriptive novel.

Kirkus Reviews