Lights Out!

Fans of Donald Westlake and Elmore Leonard will enjoy this bright caper novel from ghostwriter Bain (Close-up on Murder and dozens of other Murder, She Wrote/Jessica Fletcher mysteries). Straight-arrow Carlton Smythe, a 53-year-old engineer, has spent his career working at an Ontario power company before being “phased out.” Not content with his moneyed marriage to Cynthia and infatuated with beautiful Gina Ellanado, whom he met on a business trip to Argentina, Smythe conceives a plan to get rich by creating a major blackout, like the one in the Northeast in 2003, and selling or franchising the blackout’s specific time to criminal interests. Smythe gets the nerve to approach Dominick Martone, head of Ontario’s leading crime family, but he must also contend with a nosy mother-in-law, a drunken engineer, a private detective, a DEA agent, and a Malaysian terrorist. Smythe’s plan takes off with unintended, unexpected, and amusing results. [em]Agent: Bob Diforio, D4EO Literary Agency. (June) [/em]