The Choice Of Eddie Franks

Description for THE CHOICE OF EDDIE FRANKS by Brian Freemantle:

Smart, savvy hotel tycoon Eddie Franks wakes up one day to find himself the pawn in a amultimillion-dollar, deadly setup.

The FBI accuses him of using his brand-new Caribbean hotel chain to launder millions of dollars of illegal money. Money that the private financiers who backed Eddie have channeled into the hotel casinos through cooperative lines of credit with a Nevada casino. And his backers are members of organized crime. The proof is irrefutable.

Unless Eddie is far stupider than his business success indicates, he's in it deep. And the FBI want him. Very badly.

The thing is, Eddie is innocent, appallingly, stupidly innocent. And the only man who can vouch for that has just been murdered: Nicky Scargo, Eddie's brother-in-law.

Eddie had started out with very little, and had become very successful; but he had never gotten over the need to outdo Nicky, his childhood rival. Sure, Eddie'd built himself and empire, and won Nicky's sister in the marriage ---but has he done better than Nicky?

When his old rival proposed the private financing from sources he vouched for, Eddie was hooked: Nicky was sweating for his business---in effect, working for Eddie.

Seduced by pride as well as family feeling, Eddie agreed to the financing, making one fatal mistake: He did not run an independent check on the backers. After all, Nicky gold him they were old friends of the family.

But now 'Nicky is dead'. Now Eddie's marriage is crumbling under the strain, and his widowed sister-in-law is making herself very available. Faced with a choice of loves, and the loss of his business empire, Eddie has another even more crucial choice to make: to remain silent, become an accomplice, and probably go to prison. Or to tell all, possibly to no purpose, and perhaps wind up dead...

It is the choice of Eddie Franks.