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Swindler's Revenge
Ellen Butler, author
There are no softball cases in the FBI…especially when an agent gets dirty.
Karina Cardinal’s Saturday starts out with a bang, and it’s not the home renovation marathon she’s watching on HGTV. It’s the FBI banging on her door, hunting for a fugitive. As if she could easily hide one in her modest condo. Especially one named Mike Finnegan.
The two of them called it splitsville a couple months ago, but Mike? Take a $1.2 million bribe? No and no and no. No matter how much damning evidence the feds claim to have. When a mysterious burner phone shows up in her pocket, Karina has no doubt who dropped it there. Mike is deep undercover and so far off-grid, he needs help to figure out who’s framing him—and why.
Classic Karina, she jumps in with both feet, ignoring the dangers. The trouble with leaping before you look? You can land in a world of dirt. And when an old enemy starts playing hardball, you can end up six feet under it.
Reviews
In Butler’s engrossing fifth mystery featuring Washington, D.C., lobbyist Karina Cardinal (after 2020’s Pharaoh’s Forgery), Karina has ended her romantic relationship with FBI cybercrimes division special agent Mike Finnegan, but she gets involved with him again after her apartment is raided by an FBI team searching for him. The lead agent, Gerald Newcomb, who has a warrant authorizing a search of Karina’s home, explains that Mike is suspected of stealing over $1 million. Karina later learns a man calling himself Mike Finnegan and matching her ex-boyfriend’s description opened a new account at Mike’s bank. That same day, $1.2 million was transferred into the account from the Cayman Islands, and the next day, when Mike called in sick, the man who opened the bank account withdrew that entire amount, a suspicious transaction flagged by the IRS. With Mike’s current whereabouts unknown and indications that Newcomb has an axe to grind against him, Karina determines to help her former lover. Butler keeps the plot barreling ahead. Fans of intelligent escapism will look forward to more. (Self-published)
