The Counterfeit Connection.
A Tony Flaner Mystery
Art and artifice, fakes and facades, pretenders without and within.
After months of nothing, insecure sleuth Tony Flaner gets four cases in one night. Two of them are paying; a background check and a missing person. One is for family pride, the other is personal—because Tony is taking everything personally. A rival detective is talking smack, and a looming high school reunion threatens disaster, exposure, and maybe the loss of his girlfriend. Tony’s angsty teenage son is going through phases which may now include crime, but not appreciation of the new fifty-thousand dollar car Tony gave him for Christmas.
Tony must face international intrigue, falling fame, angry dogs, and the dreaded—God help him—domestic case, all the while drowning in the mental sludge of imposter-syndrome and the real pollution of the infamous Salt Lake City inversion. Even the air isn’t real.
Actors and agents, hippies and obsessions, a Burmese coup, and the worst song ever from Rogers and Hammerstein test Tony’s luck, skill, and patience as he uncovers the Counterfeit Connection.
Tony is off the rails in his head, suffering from imposter syndrome. His past successes stand as flukes, lucky breaks for a faker. A real detective has called him out and the complete lack of cases lately has proved his theory. While smouldering in self-pity, his out-of-his-league girlfriend is invited to party at the Sundance Film Festival. It's either that or hang around a smelly bar with Tony's less than model friends in the stinking Salt Lake City winter inversion air. What's a girl to do? It's a business event, nothing to fear. It's not like she'll meet rich, attractive, successful people, who'll shine the brighter for what she's had in overweight slovenly pathetic loser Tony. Off she goes while Tony suddenly get a hat-trick of cases all at once, each as false as the next.
THE COUNTERFEIT CONNECTION
Genre: Detective Mystery/Comedy
Words: 102,000
Status: Available now at Amazon from Rough Edges Press.