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THE DEVIL’S BAIT is the first original book for e-readers written by Mr. Mariotte. He makes the tongue in cheek observation that this e-book thing may be around for awhile. His blog is called Dispatches From The Flying M and is one of the spots I make regular stops. He always has something interesting to say about writing or his ranch in Arizona.

And on to the book.

Jessie Dawn Cutler works as a relationship banker for MetroBank. That is, she manages the accounts of one of the bank’s biggest customers: Richard Steele. One afternoon she sees something she shouldn’t have after a business lunch with Steele. Hurrying after him to give him a card she’d forgotten, Jessie comes around a corner in the parking garage to see him talking to a man. Almost at that instant, a carload of shooters attacks the pair. Steele and his companion pull their own guns and a brief shoot-out occurs, with Steele’s side winning. Self-defense right? The next thing shocks Jessie. Steele and the other man go to each of the shooters, already down, and put a bullet in the head, then calmly get in their cars and leave.

When there’s absolutely nothing about it in the papers the next day, it starts Jessie thinking. A lot of Steele’s business was moving huge amounts of cash around, from the Cayman Islands to Paris to Switzerland and many others. It had never bothered Jessie before because Steele had been handed off to her by her mentor when that woman moved up into management. But now…

The first thing she does is take the Steele files out with her and then goes to her boss’s boss, a man who’d been her father’s protege when he first started. She laid it all out to him and he promised to look into it. Later that day, someone pushes her off the ledge in front of a subway train. She barely survives, squeezing into a narrow space as the train whizzes by. Shaken, she returns home to find that someone had searched her apartment.

Reality sets in. Only one man had known she had questioned Steele and his accounts.

On the run now, Jessie goes to a government agency that specializes in investigating large cash flows, wanting to see the agent in charge. At the last instant, she sees a man coming down the hall: Steele’s companion in the gun battle yesterday! She beats it out a side door.

Her next try is the newspapers. An eager young reporter, with visions of a Pulitzer in his future, takes on her story.

He’s found murdered the next day.

Staying on the move and hiding in places someone like her never went, she finally goes to someone the bad guys would never suspect; an estranged sister, one much older than Jessie(already gone out of the family before Jessie was even born). No one knew about her, Jessie never listed her on any paperwork or even talked about her. Living in the mid-West, the sister, Joan, helps her(family and all) set up a new identity, sending her to the right people, even helping her find a mercenary, a kind of washed up looking, but capable guy, to protect her.

What we have here is a fast-paced thriller. Jessie, while unused to violence, is a capable young woman in the world of banking. She’s willing to learn though. Her mercenary handles that end for awhile. The pair decide to take a pro-active approach to dealing with Steele and his hired killers. You get a lot of exotic locals as they move around, one step, though not always, ahead of an army of Steele’s killers, working Jessie’s magic in finance.

All she wants is her normal life back.

Nice, tight thriller, with several twists thrown in along the way. One perhaps I should have figured, though Mariotte disguised it nicely as the story flows along. I was surprised and pleased with this one. Well worth the modest price asked on AMAZON. Other ebook versions are on the way.

This was a good one