DUPED

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.