Rip-Off [Kindle Edition]

Mar Preston (Author)

Book Description

High-tech burglary and murder are bad for business in the upscale, tourist-destination beach city of Santa Monica with its leftist politics, rich homeowners, and huge homeless population. Bad for Detective Dave Mason of the Santa Monica Police Department.

A deadbeat burglar has been found in the upscale Santa Monica beach condo of a playboy studio exec. The dead body must link up with a string of high-tech burglaries, and the Chechens Mason keeps meeting must link up with each other somehow, but how?

The investigation leads him down mean streets into the dark world of embezzlement and an explosion that almost kills him. The stakes rise as the investigation send Mason to the Hollywood Russian community where he is warned off by the FBI and Homeland Security. A bungled take down results in two murders of key informants. Fingers are pointed. Mason is outranked and the Department blamed.

While Mason brings an international whodunit to an end, restoring his own and the Department’s reputation, he finds his relationship with his community activist girlfriend teetering on the edge.

Editorial Reviews

From the Author

I spent years reading Chechen websites, histories, political debates, and newspapers to write the background for Rip-Off. I am so White, Anglo-Saxon Protestant that Chechnya is endlessly fascinating to me. I have deep sympathy for this small country beset by invaders for centuries.

The characters I've imagined here are Chechnya's dark side. People do what they need to do to survive here.

Would we be so different?

Product Details

• File Size: 415 KB
• Print Length: 237 pages
• Publisher: Pertinacity Press; 1 edition (April 22, 2012)
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
• Language: English
• ASIN: B007WTYGI4
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• X-Ray: Not Enabled
• Lending: Enabled
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #367,859 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Rip-Off by Mar Preston July 20, 2012

By Ruth Ann Hixson

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

Rip-Off
By Mar Preston

Epub ebook ISBN: 978-0-9844952-4-5 0-9844952-4-X
Print edition ISBN: 978-0-9844952-3-8 0-984452-3-1
Kindle edition ISBN: 978-0-9844952-5-2 0-9844952-5-8

Mar Preston's novel Rip-Off is packed to the brim with action and suspense. Another Dave Mason novel, it has several threads of plots that are artfully interwoven to produce a drama about crime and the conflict and competition within the Santa Monica Police Department. In addition to solving a murder with few clues, Mason must deal with the quarrels within in his own team. To make matters worse he is saddled with a police officer who is a loose cannon with a volatile temper.
Every time Mason thinks he has a clue, new pieces of the puzzle appear that don't fit in but are too significant to be coincidences. There is a burglary in the same building, the Astoria condos where the wealthy live. The murder victim doesn't fit in with the apartment in which he's found, the same building in which there had been recent burglaries. Each step in solving the case takes him deeper in to the organized crime of the Chechen mob.
How is the building manager involved? How is wife, who's Chechen, involved? Then there's the FBI and Homeland Security who keep showing up at Mason's crime scenes and whisking away the evidence and the body. Mason's superiors are putting on the pressure to solve the case quickly to minimize the media coverage that could hurt the tourist trade.
Mason has the added pressure that he might lose his girlfriend who is thinking about taking a job in Chicago. He is afraid he is losing her.
Excerpt from the book: "Just when they thought the case had gone stale again, Delgado came into the office grinning with a tip he'd extracted from one of his guys on the street. He'd manipulated Puskar's girlfriend with a promise that he'd talk to the Assistant DA and request her charges be bumped down...
'I'm checking into what Puskar was paying his bills with.' Saker said, holding up the printout his charge card receipts. "He sure was spending it."
'Find out who he was hanging with the last few days,' Fredericks said unnecessarily.
'I look dumb to you, Fredericks?' Delgado said. He was putting together his file of stuff to take with him, heading out to an address in Lomita, a working-class suburb.
'Oh, please, don't give me an opportunity like that. I'm weak,' she returned.
'I was doing this when you were in middle school, little girl,' Delgado said, patting her on the head on his way to the door."
Mason must connect the dots to solve the case, but he doesn't have all the dots. When called to another murder scene, a Chechen woman found in a graveyard, the FBI and Homeland Security show up to take over the scene. Why? Insisting that the FBI inform him of the evidence of the murder, Mason gets little from them that he didn't already have. The victim was the sister of the wife of the building manager where Puskar's body was found. More clues that didn't fit together.
This is a book that will keep the reader turning the pages as Preston gradually twists the threads of the different plots into a rope that leads to the solving of the crimes.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Rip-Off Review February 19, 2013

By foodie

Format:Kindle Edition

I am a voracious reader of murder mysteries so I feel confident that I can honestly give a 2 thumbs up for Mar Preston's newest book" Rip-Off". The plot is well developed and tight. The characters are believable and Santa Monica CA is interestingly described warts and all.
I recommend this fine book to all lovers of this genre of novels. Hope Ms Preston is working on further Dave Mason mysteries!

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Interesting Police Procedural December 11, 2012

By Sandra Kirkland VINE™ VOICE

Format:Kindle Edition

The case looks simple to Detective Dave Mason. A body is found at the scene of a robbery, and it looks like a case of burglars falling out and one shooting the other. Newly promoted in the Santa Monica Police Department to being a supervisor, Mason can use an easy one to make him look good.

But the case gets more and more complicated the more it unravels. This appears to be a highly structured burglary team who perhaps have inside knowledge. There have been a string of break-ins at expensive residences, and someone has to be giving them ideas of where to rob next. The latest victims seem to have more to hide than the burglars. The lady of the house, a beautiful Eastern European named Irina, seems very unconcerned about her losses. Her husband, the condo manager, seems edgy and preoccupied. Then there are the Chechens. Mason doesn't know much about this group, but they have been moving in lately and setting up a sophisticated criminal gang that is threatening to overtake the city.

Mason has enough problems without a complicated case. He is still feeling his way as a supervisor, his former friends and colleagues now reporting to him in a new relationship. His superiors are not exactly warm and supportive; they expect results and they expect them now. His personal life is also unsettled; he is interested in Ginger but it's unclear where this romance is going and if she can adjust to life with a cop.

Mar Preston has written an interesting police procedural. This is the second in the Dave Mason series, and readers will identify with his struggles. The plotting has an excellent feel for police work, the tedium and paperwork, the putting together of minute clues to discern the true picture, and the sudden bursts of action that can take a life. This book is recommended for mystery readers.

More About the Author

What if a major gambling outfit tried to build a high-rise casino in downtown, upscale Santa Monica? What if one of the city councilmembers, like the ones I knew well, was murdered before she could cast the deciding vote? This is the basic plot of my first Dave Mason mysteries called No Dice. The second one, Rip-Off, tells what happened when a wily pair of high-tech burglars encounter Chechen organized crime in Detective Dave Mason's Santa Monica.

In Santa Monica development politics are blood sport. I love the city. It's built out to its glamorous edges, one of which is the Pacific Ocean. What gets built--and doesn't get built--stirs up hot disputes and marathon city council meetings. I loved the idea of playing with the dynamics between big money and big ideas that change the urban landscape. Just as fascinating are the interactions between cops and community activists.

Dave Mason, a homicide detective in the Santa Monica Police Department, came to me as a fully developed character when I saw two actual homicide detectives sitting in a black Crown Vic. They were there to monitor a crowd of old ladies, kids, and die hard activists marching to support hotel workers.

I was a burnt out academic researcher for decades, then grant writer, editor, and creative writing teacher. At the same time I was a political insider during Santa Monica's rent control and living wage wars. Getting a good mystery out of what goes on behind the scenes makes all those dreary council meetings worthwhile.

I am in the editing phase of the third Dave Mason mystery called On Behalf of the Family. Expect it early 2014.

In the meantime I've written the debut novel of a mystery suspense series which takes place in the mountain village somewhat like the one where I live in the Los Padres National Forest. I hope you will like Detective Dex Stafford of the Kern County Sheriff's Department and his prickly ally, Holly Seabright of the town's patrol department.

Their adventure begins in a forest fire when the mayor's beheaded body is found with a note reading Payback stuffed in his mouth. And ends where a much grimmer shadow looms over the town.

See my blog at marpreston.com