“Charles Pearson Brandt," Nina said, "was an independent financial advisor who ran a Ponzi scheme in Hudson and the West Island for fifteen years or so. About three years ago, though, he disappeared with his assistant-cum-accomplice-cum-girlfriend and fifty million or more of his clients’ money, although he’d probably scammed half again that amount. Small potatoes, I suppose, compared to the hundreds of millions Bernie Madoff stole, but a whack of money none the less. Brandt’s victims were mostly elderly: widows, widowers and retirees, referred to him by his other clients, who believed he was making them a shitload of money. I guess they’d never heard, or had forgotten, that if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is… He left nearly a hundred elderly people, people who trusted him, completely destitute.”

Michael Blair is a freelance technical writer/editor living in Montreal. Overexposed is his third mystery, a sequel to If Looks Could Kill, a finalist for the 1999 Chapters/Robertson Davies Prize and shortlisted for the 2001 Quebec Writers Federation First Book Prize. His second mystery, A Hard Winter Rain, was published by Dundurn in 2004.

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• Short-listed, QWF Prize for Best First Book