Fair Is Foul and Foul Is Fair

A drop-dead gorgeous blonde socialite, with a penchant for seduction and with secrets to keep, pays a visit to the office of Los Angeles private eye and ex-L.A.P.D. Detective Ben Malone. Malone is an eccentric shamus who plays fast and loose with the rules, insisting on following only his own personal moral code. He also has a serious weakness for beautiful, sultry women. The enchantress confides to Malone that she has witnessed a murder, but can't go to the police because she moonlights as a prostitute and fears having it exposed. Even when she won't reveal anything about her identity, beyond her first name, a large cash retainer entices Malone to take her case which involves laying bare to the police a powerful and ruthless Los Angeles mobster's connection to the murder. What could possibly go wrong?

Maverick hero Ben Malone, from Come What May, the first book in the Malone Mystery Novel series, is back in another action-packed, thrilling adventure, this time as a Los Angeles private eye. Amid his adjustment from LAPD detective to running his own private investigations agency, a strikingly beautiful blonde carrying a bundle of cash pays a visit to Malone's office with a somewhat curious problem. The seductive blonde confides that she witnessed a murder, but for delicate, personal reasons can't go to the police to report what she saw. Empathetic with her situation, Malone agrees to take on a most unusual case for a private detective. He must find and bring to the attention of the L.A.P.D., the identities of the murderers so that they justice can take its course without involving his client.

All in all, in the beginning, the case seems innocuous enough, an easy money assignment. That is until things start to unravel. There are three more murders connected to the first one before Malone's investigation even gets untracked. From there, like an out of control roller coaster, things go downhill fast and from bad to worse. Malone learns that the string of murders is mob-connected. The man believed behind them is a heavy hitter, a vicious mob boss of the Los Angeles' Ukrainian mafia and a man who will stop at nothing to eliminate Malone's client. In the initial confrontation with the Ukrainian gangster, Malone is stunned to learn that his love interest, feisty psychiatrist Sara Bernstein is caught in the crosshairs, having been abducted while attending a conference in San Francisco. She is held hostage by the mobster as leverage to force Malone to betray the whereabouts of his client. He also discovers that things may not be as they first appeared with his drop-dead gorgeous client. She may be a femme fatale up to her pretty ears in a little criminal behavior of her own.

Malone races against time, first to rescue Bernstein, and then to sort the innocent from the guilty in time to solve what rapidly evolves into a complicated web of deceit and criminal wrongdoing where fair is foul, and foul is fair.