False Profits - Hardcover

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*Starred Review* It's hard to believe that this clever and engaging adventure is Smiley's first novel; it reads like the latest in a well-established series. Smiley's heroine, 30-year-old divorcee Tucker Sinclair, works her tail off at a downtown L.A. financial-advising firm and relaxes at her Malibu-area beach cottage; that is, she would relax if her actress mother wasn't a current houseguest. When her mom goes off to a shamanic retreat, leaving her daughter to care for Muldoon, the wicked Westie, the tuckered Tucker relishes the quiet. But things don't stay quiet for long--a shake-up at work has Tucker in danger of losing the partnership she has worked hard to earn. After writing a business plan for Dr. Milton Polk, who wants to expand his radiology practice, Tucker is shocked to discover that a different, crazy plan has been presented to investors--one of whom wants to sue. To top it off, Polk is missing, and all the paperwork in his file has disappeared. Combing L.A. for clues, Tucker encounters a dead body--and a hot body belonging to a handsome police detective. Fans of Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum will appreciate the gutsy and klutzy Tucker. Jenny McLarin
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An engaging, down-to-earth heroine—a successful L.A. management consultant with a charming weakness for her Porsche Boxster—more than compensates for a predictable story line in Smiley's first novel. When investors accuse Tucker Sinclair of doctoring a business plan, they approach Sinclair's boss and mentor, Gordon Aames, and demand their $11 million back. Sinclair goes in search of the plan's primary author, a brash neurologist, Milton Polk, and discovers not her elusive doctor but a policeman with a Polaroid of the dead Polk. In an unlikely scenario, Sinclair injects herself into a charity luncheon given by the highly suspicious Wade Covington, a powerful man connected both to Aames and the murder victim. Clarification of Covington's murky relationship to Polk and of a convoluted insurance scam take up most of Sinclair's energy, though she finds time for sparkless visits with her ex-husband and skirmishes with her Aunt Sylvia, who's determined to get her hands on Sinclair's beachfront cottage. A romantic interest appears on the horizon in the last few pages, a clear indicator that this book hopes to be the first in a series. With fresher devices and plot turns, it should be a pleasure to see Sinclair in action again.
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