A Dangerous Business

In this short and well-crafted mystery, husband and wife investor team Worth and Niccola Caivano are doing due diligence on a potential investment in a war-torn country in West Africa involving building low-income housing and exporting diamonds. Parker, the organizer of the deal, is becoming financially strapped from keeping his trophy wife, Kandy, in the lifestyle she’s accustomed to and is desperate to keep the deal from falling apart. But when one of the lead investors is found dead, suspicion falls on Worth. So Worth and Niccola need to investigate the murder and clear his name. Their travels take them to Tel Aviv, Antwerp, and into West Africa, where they find that the stakes may be higher than they realize.

A Dangerous Business is an exceptionally well-crafted story, with memorable characters, good dialog, and a compelling storyline. The interplay between Worth and Niccola, or Nick, as Worth calls her, bring to mind an earlier married couple involved in mysteries; Dashiell Hammett’s Nick and Nora Charles. Lawyer Niccola provides the sense of reality to her husband’s enthusiasms or, as she calls it, “being the wet blanket,” while Worth pursues each new opportunity with a child-like zeal. Between the two of them, they form a pleasurable fictional couple. The story is fast paced, the secondary characters have depth and provide Worth and Niccola fodder for their own interplay. Recommended for fans of classic crime stories in the Hammett and Agatha Christie vein.