PETER SPIEGELMAN

El investigador privado John March recibe la visita de su hermano David, un ejecutivo de Wall Street que anda metido en un desagradable problema: ha estado manteniendo una tórrida relación con una mujer que ha conocido a traves de internet y que ahora amenaza con contarlo todo. David quiere que John le ayude a encontrarla, pero la aparicion del cuerpo de una mujer flotando en el rio cambiara el curso de los acontecimientos. En esta nueva entrega de las andanzas del detective John March, Peter Spiegelman se confirma como uno de los mejores representantes del nuevo genero negro americano, a cuyas adictivas paginas aporta su inconfundible estilo.

As a cop, John March once flirted with danger. Then his wife was murdered and his flirtation became full time engagement. Now he is a private investigator in one of the most dangerous places on earth, New York City. He is a loner whose job has destroyed every new attempt at a relationship. The one thing he has promised himself is that he will never mix danger and his private life again. But that's before his brother asks John to warn off the mysterious young woman who is blackmailing him. He knows her only as Wren. Principle identifying mark: a red cat tattoo. And that's before the woman's dead body is pulled out of the East River. People remember John asking questions about Wren. Now he is prime suspect in a homicide case.

El gigante financiero MWB (el Banco Mundial del Comercio) acaba de derrumbarse. La investigación federal es inevitable. March es un investigador privado que vive en Nueva York y que acaba de ser requerido por su viejo amigo, el abogado Michael Metz, para que ayude a un cliente suyo, funcionario en el banco de inversión que acaba de declararse en bancarrota. Se supone que alguien ha accedido a información confidencial del MWB con la que amenazar al cliente de Metz: la entrega de dichos documentos a la prensa y a la opinión pública derrumbaría su carrera profesional, cuya cima ha alcanzado desde los cimientos de la banca con sangre, sudor y lágrimas. Reales o inventados, esos datos podrían hacerle mucho daño y echar por tierra décadas de sacrificio. March debe tener mucho cuidado, claro, para no cruzarse en el camino de los investigadores federales.

Years after the personal tragedy that scarred his life, Private Investigator John March lives a twilight existence in Manhattan. He is tough and ruthlessly efficient in his professional life, yet introspective and vulnerable when it comes to his relationships with women. And he struggles daily to maintain a tenuous armed truce with his memories.March's latest case threatens to shatter that brittle peace: his client is a banker who is being blackmailed, and the man's beautiful wife is in the firing line. March's prime suspect is Gerard Nassouli, a monstrous manipulator who vanished years ago. Is Nassouli still a fugitive, or has the law - or one of his many enemies - finally caught up with him? Did he die, or was the vanishing act just one more devilish ploy?Whoever is behind the blackmail is not afraid of killing and March is going to risk everything, including a fragile new happiness as he plunges into a feverish world of greed, corruption and murder.

A sharp, suspenseful first novel about white collar crime in the world of high finance. John March walked away from his family's venerable merchant bank, for the life of rural deputy sheriff - a life that would explode in personal tragedy and professional disaster. Three years later, March is back in Manhattan, working as a PI and running from his grief and the expectations of his wealthy family. March takes the case of Rick Pierro, a self-made man who has almost everything, and who's in danger of losing it all - to blackmail. Anonymous, poisonous, a threat implicates Pierro in a vast money-laundering scheme currently the focus of a Federal investigation. March follows a bloodstained trail to Wall Street insiders and outcasts, and finds his client may be just the latest victim of a serial extortionist diabolically adept at psychological and physical intimidation. And the more March learns, the more his questions mount about his client, his client's wife, and the secrets hidden beneath the glossy surfaces of their lives. With pared-down, incisive language, brilliantly clarified details of the world of finance (the legal and the illegal), keenly rendered intricacies of character, and a headlong narrative, Black Maps is a riveting debut novel.

After the slaying of his wife, New York private investigator John March made an uneasy peace with grief and guilt. But his truce came at a price: a life of solitude and rigid self-discipline. Working his cases with a ruthless, dispassionate zeal, running mile after mile through the city streets, and avoiding relationships like the plague, March isolated himself emotionally, even as he insulated himself from the traumas of his past. It was a hard bargain, but one he was willing to make - until he met Jane Lu. Brilliant and beautiful, Jane offered March a chance at a larger life. But with that hope came a terrible reminder of how fragile happiness can be - Jane was swept up, and nearly swept away, in the violent currents of one of March'' s jobs. Now, trapped between the lonely familiarity of his Spartan existence, a flood of dangerous memories, and the promise - and demands - of a relationship with Jane, the last thing March needs is a case that spills over into his personal life. But that'' s exactly what he gets when he goes to work for Nina Sachs. Her ex-husband, wealthy equity analyst Gregory Danes, has dropped out of sight, and what seems a cut and dried missing persons case becomes something much more deadly. March unearths a rat'' s nest of family strife, business betrayals, and conspiracies, and finds that Danes left a long line of enemies in his troubled wake. And, March discovers, he'' s not alone in his hunt for the missing man. Someone else is searching for Danes - someone who doesn'' t want March getting too close, and who will put March, and all he holds dear, in the cross-hairs once again.