Practice to Deceive (Holland Taylor, 2)

The next in the series by the author of the 1996 Edgar Award winner, Penance.

The brash and resourceful St. Paul private investigator Holland Taylor takes on an unpromising embezzlement case - an elderly woman has been cheated out of her life savings. But when Taylor tracks down Levering Field, the unscrupulous businessman who handled her investments, he finds that more is at stake - Mrs. Gustafson's financial ruin is only one strand in a spider's web of fraud and intrigue.

With the help of his elegant attorney lady love and an eccentric computer-genius friend, Taylor starts probing undercover into Field's activities and soon finds that someone seems anxious to derail his investigation. The game quickly becomes serious when Field is found shot to death and Taylor is first suspected of the crime and then shot at himself.

Frightened at the dangerously widening net but determined to get answers, Taylor follows a trail to computer records that reveal a list of prominent people with large investments in Field's operations. Millions of dollars are at stake, as well as the reputations of the most powerful people in The Cities. As a hired killer pursues him, Taylor races to put together the last pieces of the puzzle, find the money, and catch the people who are willing to do anything to stop him.