The Flash Effect Book

Once a big-league pitching prospect, Charlie Pine is washed up before he's twenty-five. Marking time as a substitute public school teacher, he's living in a basement apartment, driving a beat-up car, behind on his credit cards, and not very successful in getting laid. He's also on the outs with his father, Victor, and his brother, Marshall, two wheeler-dealers in the international diamond trade, who specialize in forming corporations that pay healthy officer salaries before going bankrupt. Charlie's life has reached such a low point that he's willing to make a change, any change ... even one for the worse; so when his brother calls with a proposition offering him a chance to get in on the ground floor of something new, something with a payoff that can be worth millions of dollars, Charlie, against his better instincts, accepts. A small research firm outside Tel Aviv has devised a method by which the cheapest diamond can be transformed into flawless perfection. The process is irreversible, cheap, and undetectable. Heading the lab is an Israeli woman with advanced degrees in organic chemistry and a knockout figure. A scheme is hatched by which the transformed diamonds will be sold through Charlie's father's firm. But the supposedly foolproof scam quickly falls apart. Victor Pine disappears, a murder takes place, the enhanced diamonds are missing, and instead of finding glory, Charlie becomes surrounded by ruthless professionals. Can he get out alive and can he find redemption - both in his own eyes and in the eyes of others?