THE SINGER'S GUN

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; they sold forged passports and social security cards to illegal aliens together, until Anton began to long for a less corrupt way of living in the world and set out to change his life. By his late twenties he has reinvented himself as a successful middle manager at a water systems consulting firm.

Anton leads a happy, steady life, engaged to be married and working in a job he loves, until 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 secretary has disappeared, and his cousin Aria is blackmailing him; if he doesn't do one last job for her, she'll tell his unsuspecting new wife that Anton's diploma is a fake.

As Anton's carefully constructed life begins to disintegrate around him, he's forced to choose between his loyalty to his family and his longing to live honorably in the world.

Winner of the Indie Booksellers Choice Awards 2011.