Good Behavior: The Letty Dobesh Chronicles

The current TV series of the same title, featuring Downton Abbey star Michelle Dockery as Crouch’s flawed antihero, will give a boost to sales of this collection of three lightweight novellas about Letty Dobesh, a small-time crook recently released from Virginia’s Fluvanna Correctional Center, where she served nine months for felony theft. Crouch (Dark Matter) puts Letty into a Hitchcockian situation in the first entry, “The Pain of Others.” She’s in the midst of stealing some cash and electronic equipment from a hotel room when the occupant returns. While hiding, she overhears one man hiring another to kill his wife. Will she be able to resist her instinct to just walk away from the situation? In “Sunset Key,” a thug offers Letty a huge payday to seduce a white collar crook who’s about to go to jail for running an Enron-like scam. The thug also wants Letty to steal a valuable van Gogh. In the final story, “Grab,” Letty’s trip across country to reunite with her young son in Oregon is delayed when she’s recruited for a complex Vegas heist. The inclusion of commentary on how the stories were adapted for the screen should interest the TV show’s fans. [em]Agent: David Hale Smith, Inkwell Management. (Nov.) [/em]