Shakedown

As a former Secret Service agent, Gerald Petievich brings to fiction the genuine, gritty authority of the insider. In Shakedown, his latest novel, he explores the sinister underworld of Las Vegas, where prostitutes, informers, hitmen and hustlers mix in the neon glare. One of its denizens is Eddie Sands, ex-con, a shakedown artist whose one weakness is that he's in love with a beautiful girl who happens to be a con artist supreme herself.

When Eddie decides to shake down a famous Hollywood star whose sex life could ruin his screen career, he sets off a chain of events that leads straight to the white-hot center of crime and punishment in Vegas, and brings down on himself the attentions of Tony Parisi, the mob's kingpin in Las Vegas, and FBI agent John Novak, a disillusioned law enforcement officer with bulldog tenacity.

Layer by layer Novak uncovers a plot which takes him to the highest level of law enforcement, even to the steps of the White House itself, as he gradually becomes aware that his own superiors may be betraying him and that his own career, even his life may be at stake.

Petievich has written a taut and captivating thriller, set in America's capital of sin and easy money - Las Vegas, a city where loyalty and love are the biggest gambles of all.