The Girl with a Clock for a Heart

At the start of Swanson’s Machiavellian debut noir, magazine business manager George Foss spots Liana Decter, a college girlfriend he hasn’t seen in nearly two decades, in a Boston bar. Back then, George got off relatively unscathed: a broken heart and only peripheral involvement in a murder probe. But this time promises to be far more dangerous. Liana, a wanted fugitive going under the alias Jane Byrne, asks George for a big favor—she wants him to serve as a go-between to return most of the half million she stole from her married sugar daddy, shady furniture magnate Gerald MacLean, and to persuade Gerald to call off the goon who’s been threatening her. Predictably, little of this goes according to plan. Swanson gives readers an adrenaline rush through all the hairpin turns, but is less successful in making his central femme fatale either convincing or interesting. Cast Michelle Williams in the film version and it might be a different story. Agent: Nat Sobel, Sobel Weber Associates. (Feb.)