License to Lie by Terry Ambrose
The story begins much like the old joke, “A guy
walks into a bar…” Except, in this case, the bar is a restaurant and the guy
behind the bar is a waiter or waitress who looks perfectly wholesome and
trustworthy. Unfortunately, your server has a camera phone and a friend who
steals credit card information.
Con artists and scammers come from all walks of
life; they look just like you and me. The difference is that most people don’t
want to make a living by taking advantage of others, but those other guys…well,
they’re just different. That’s part of the reason I like to write about them. I
have a column on Examiner.com
that focuses on real-life scams and cons. While I love doing the investigation
and writing for that column, it’s much more fun to bring characters with
less-than-honorable intentions into a novel where they can really cut loose.
Let’s take another look at that opening example.
What if the waiter is a young kid struggling to pay down his student loans and
has a wife at home with their newborn son? When an acquaintance asks him if
he’d like to make a little extra cash, he remembers the ache on his wife’s face
when they talked about her going back to work; he remembers the smell of his
newborn son right after a bath; and he worries about how they’ll ever put
together enough cash to move out of the dump they must live in now. He jumps at
the chance to make more money, even though he knows he’s doing something
illegal, by rationalizing that the only ones who will really lose anything are
the big banks who will hold those gigantic student loans over his head for who
knows how many more years.
Our waiter is truly a character in conflict. If
he accepts the chance to make some quick cash, he’ll likely travel down a very
dark path before he finds his way back to the ideals he held so dear just a few
years earlier. When I’m writing fiction, the characters are the ones I believe
drive the story. If the character is a “normal” person who’s been driven by
circumstance to the wrong side of the law, there’s so much potential to create
a compelling plot driven by emotions and needs. To me, that’s what good fiction
is all about—the character.
In my new novel, “License to Lie,” two
characters who view the law quite differently meet and are forced to work
together by circumstance. The result is that these two, both from opposite
sides of the law, find themselves questioning every lesson they ever
learned—including, who should they trust when they can’t trust a soul…even
their own.
Here’s what two early readers said:
“License to Lie is fast and well written, almost
sure to satisfy discerning readers of thrillers.” — T. Jefferson Parker, author
of “The Jaguar” and “The Border Lords”.
"Fast-paced, unpredictable, and a lot of
fun--no one is who they seem in this smart and twisty tale of high finance and
double dealing." — Hank Phillippi Ryan, Anthony, Agatha
and Macavity award-winning author
Bio:
Terry Ambrose started out skip tracing and
collecting money from deadbeats and quickly learned that liars come from all
walks of life. He never actually stole a car, but sometimes hired big guys with
tow trucks and a penchant for working in the dark to “help” when negotiations
failed.
Book Blurb:
With $5 million and their lives on the line, can
a determined criminologist and a beautiful con artist learn to trust each
other? Or themselves?
Roxy Tanner lies for a living. Skip Cosgrove uncovers the lies others
tell. Together, they have twelve
hours to meet a ransom demand or her father will die. When Roxy reveals that she has the money, Skip
is sure of one thing: his way-too-attractive client is lying to him.
As events unfold, these two loners discover that
for those living on the edge, trust is a luxury they can’t afford. There’s only
one thing left for them to do.
Never trust a soul…even your own.
Links:
To buy:
http://www.amazon.com/License-Lie-Terry-Ambrose/dp/1610090519
Links:
To buy:
http://www.amazon.com/License-Lie-Terry-Ambrose/dp/1610090519
Website: http://terryambrose.com
Facebook: http://facebook.com/suspense.writer
From Marilyn:
I'm really impressed by the caliber of your early readers and what they had to say. Wow! What great endorsements for your book!
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