The Confidence Man

For The Confidence Man, love is the greatest con game of all. Los Angeles in 1928, where everyone wants to be someone else, where fantasy and reinvention are the orders of the day, particularly now that the moving picture business, the city’s biggest industry, has got everyone scared thanks to this newfangled thing called sound. Meet Billy Dice, a young confidence man right at home in a town full of con men and women. Billy tells the suckers on the Venice Beach Pier he has six weeks to find true love before he dies. Truth or fiction? With Billy, it’s hard to tell. He lands a job driving for an up-and-coming actor named Frank Cooper, known to everyone as Gary. Women love Gary Cooper, and he loves them right back, even though no one thinks he has any future in the movies. But when Coop meets Nell Devereaux, the beautiful flier and mountain climber, he falls hard-just about as hard as Billy. Nell can save Billy’s life. All he has to do is make her fall in love with him, do something about Coop’s infatuation, and stop a nasty Cuban dictator named Machado who is determined to win Nell for himself. From Hollywood on the verge of seismic change to the rain-drenched, danger-filled environs of the Florida Keys, The Confidence Man is an enthralling adventure and epic love story filled with notorious gangsters, ruthless hustlers, and beautiful movie stars that will keep you turning pages. It’s something very different from Ron Base, author of the bestselling Sanibel Sunset Detective mysteries.