Martin Seay
The core story is set in Venice in the sixteenth century, when the famed makers of Venetian glass were perfecting one of the old world’s most wondrous inventions: the mirror. An object of glittering yet fearful fascination—was it reflecting simple reality, or something more spiritually revealing?—the Venetian mirrors were state of the art technology, and subject to industrial espionage by desirous sultans and royals world-wide. But for any of the development team to leave the island was a crime punishable by death. One man, however—a world-weary war hero with nothing to lose—has a scheme he thinks will allow him to outwit the city’s terrifying enforcers of the edict, the ominous Council of Ten . . .
Meanwhile, in two other Venices—Venice Beach, California, circa 1958, and the Venice casino in Las Vegas, circa today—two other schemers launch similarly dangerous plans to get away with a secret . . .
All three stories will weave together into a spell-binding tour-de-force that is impossible to put down—an old-fashioned, stay-up-all-night novel that, in the end, returns the reader to a stunning conclusion in the original Venice . . . and the bedazzled sense of having read a truly original and thrilling work of art.
Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. Matthew Benns. A highly entertaining, scurrilous and fascinating book on Australian con men (and women) and all their dirty, devious tricks.
There are con men you fear and con men you hate, and con men with amazing stories who take your breath away with their dirty tricks and sheer brazen effontery. How do they get away with it?
Written by bestselling author Matthew Benns, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels is a rollicking rollcall of all the worst and most outrageous scammers and dodgy dealers, a true crime book that will have readers gasping in disbelief at the sheer effrontery of these Aussie crooks and amazed at the gullibility of their victims. Con artists often revel in the image of a larrikin but this book will push beneath the veneer to delve into the true nature of the evil these people do and the long lasting damage, emotional and financial, suffered by their victims.