False Profits

Living in L.A. is like no other place on earth. And for recently divorced, thirty-year-old Tucker Sinclair, whose current domestic arrangements include sharing her just-north of Malibu Beach cottage with her actress mother, Pookie, and Pookie's annoying, twenty-pound Highland terrier, Muldoon, life can be positively surreal. A senior manager on the fast track for a partnership at Aames & Associates, Tucker is doing everything from financial face-lifts to red-ink bypasses, when a certain neurologist comes by with what could be the deal-maker of her career. All she has to do is write a simple business plan that will entice investors to fund Dr. Milton Polk's grandiose expansion schemes. Then, just as the project starts to take off, her files on Polk disappear, the good doctor himself vanishes, and Tucker finds herself accused of bilking L.A.'s moneymen out of millions of dollars. Add a washed-up corpse on Venice Beach and a sexy detective sniffing for clues and Tucker is suddenly scrambling to save her reputation and career. With a bunch of pissed-off investors on her tail, she hits the road in her silver Porsche-a legacy from her ex-trying to figure out who set her up. Out there somewhere is someone who aims to swindle her out of something far more precious than her job. To outfox an unscrupulous murderer gunning for the highest stakes, Tucker will have to sharpen all her skills to survive the deadly jungle of spreadsheets and business models. For if she fails, this deal-maker will be a done deal.