Red Deuce by Thomas Roehlk
“It’s like buying wood that already has termites deep inside.”
If you’re an American company producing defense technology – technology the Pentagon relies on – you don’t want to acquire a German company that’s been penetrated by Chinese agents. But that’s exactly what LaSalle, a Fortune 500 company based in Chicago, is about to do.
Standing in the way? Only Mandy Doucette. She’s the young, tough, smart lawyer in charge of vetting LaSalle’s acquisitions, and she senses something is wrong. She’s the one who talks about possible termites.
Will redheaded Mandy — with help from her redheaded twin sister, Reggie — get to the truth or will ruthless higher-ups silence her?
That’s the question posed at the start of the propulsive new thriller, Red Deuce.
Almost immediately, questions hit Mandy: Why did the German company deep-six a whistleblower’s complaint? Who murdered the whistleblower? And why are more people turning up murdered?
And who, Mandy asks herself, is trying to stop me from getting answers?
Who sends her a photo of her family’s home, marked with the warning, “Back off”? Who is trying to frame her? Who attacked her with a speedboat, and then with an SUV?
Flee, or Fight?
At the same time, Reggie, a smart, tough FBI forensic pathologist, is asking questions about the bodies of two men dug up from a Pennsylvania cornfield. How were the men killed? And is there a connection to the conspiracy that Mandy is digging into?
For Mandy is digging. Until now a by-the-book lawyer, she’s tossed the book away, stepped outside her comfort zone, and is making some powerful people very uncomfortable. (One member of the Board of Directors has a double identity, and Mandy is closing in on it.)
But just as the conspirators are vulnerable, so is Mandy. She has opened up to the handsome young guy whose great-great-great grandfather founded LaSalle. And she runs unprotected through the streets of Chicago as she trains for her next marathon.
Questions plague her. Can the termites — the spies embedded in the German company — be exposed and eradicated? And what is driving her actions? Is she trying to run away from something in her own past? Is escape her best option — or does she need to face her past and empower herself to overcome it?
Double Trouble
As Red Deuce takes unexpected twists and turns and accelerates, the risks mount. Somebody tries to kill Reggie with poisoned perfume. Mandy lets herself be used as bait, put in an assassin’s crosshairs. What deceptions must these sisters penetrate? What, deep down, must they discover in order to prevent catastrophe?
Called the Red Deuce by their family for their crimson hair, the Doucette sisters helm an addictive new thriller series by author Tom Roehlk, a Chicago corporate lawyer who knows the world of defense contractors. His work vividly summons his insider’s expertise on every page as Mandy and Reggie Doucette ante up on the suspense. Red Deuce marks the debut of the next propulsively readable master of corporate intrigue.
Thomas M. Roehlk is a retired corporate attorney from St. Charles, Illinois. He worked at a variety of major international corporations, including companies in the defense sector, and businesses in consumer products, transportation equipment and financial services. He spent more than 20 years as a general counsel of a public company, and as a chief compliance officer.
