The Swap

July 15, 2020
Packed off to London to retrieve a young woman reputed to be quite a handful, private investigator Nicole Graves quickly finds that Abigail Fletcher's attitude is the least of her problems. Talk about entitled. As a child, Alina Halichenko was plucked from a Kiev orphanage by "typical L.A. billionaire" Gene Fletcher and his wife, Serena, renamed Abigail, installed in their opulent home, and given every advantage denied the brother and sister she left behind. Now a high school senior, she's completing a term at King's College London, and her adoptive parents want Nicole to escort her home. The job seems insultingly routine--after all, Abigail flew to London and settled in on her own--but isn't. Shortly after Nicole meets the sulky girl and Abigail has her last meeting with her boyfriend, Sami Malouf, he's stabbed to death with a knife carrying her fingerprints. Nobody's convinced by Abigail's story of being attacked, drugged, and left unconscious outside Sami's door, and she's promptly arrested and clapped in a detention center well beneath her social station. The friends of Sami's that Nicole seeks to question for more information, from Yaman Hajjeer, a master of foreign accents, to Mohammed Antebi, who's found floating in the Thames, are little help, and it's not until she hooks up with her ex-boyfriend, mysterious lawman Ronald Reinhardt, that she starts to make progress in uncovering "the whole Nannies International scheme," which seems to have come from an insidious anti-Muslim playbook. Unconvincing, touristy thrills best summarized by the headline commending the heroine: "Annie Oakley Saves the Day."

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