The Singer’s Gun

Anton Waker travels to the island of Ischia, off the coast of Italy, and waits, for what he does not know. As his past is peeled back, layer by layer, we learn that he is not what he seems, and find that no one in his life is without a secret.Everyone Anton Waker grew up with is corrupt. His parents are dealers in stolen goods, and his first career was a partnership venture with his cousin Aria��ho he may still be half in love with-- selling forged passports and social security cards to illegal aliens. But Anton longs for a less questionable way of living in the world and sets out to change. By his late twenties he has reinvented himself as a successful middle manager at a water systems consulting firm when a routine corporate background check reveals that contrary to what the framed diploma on his office wall might suggest, Anton never actually attended Harvard. In the meantime, his cousin Aria��ho he's still half in love with--begins blackmailing him. If he doesn't do one last seemingly simple job for her, she'll tell his unsuspecting new wife that Anton's diploma is a fake. But the job proves to have profound and unexpected consequences.Elena James faces pressure of a different kind. Born and raised in the Canadian arctic, she attended college in New York on a student visa, but when she dropped out of college her visa was rendered null and void. She's been an illegal alien in New York ever since. This fact has come to the attention of Alexandra Broden, a State Department agent who's heading up the investigation into Aria's criminal activities. Elena is offered a choice: she can either cooperate in the investigation (thus betraying Anton, whom she's known for years and is falling in love with), or she'll be deported.