Gypsy hearts

About this book

Richard Milhouse "Nix" Miller is a young Hollywood con man on the prowl for femmes and fortune in post-Cold War Prague. After forty-one years of communism and two years of frontier capitalism, Central Europe is in moral and financial chaos. A charming liar and petty thief, Nix is the traveling woman's dream turned nightmare. After picking his victim's purse, he swoops gallantly to the financial rescue and treats her to a romantic tour of Prague - bed and breakfast included. In this decrepit Old World city, hungry for glamour and the promise of American stardom, Nix feels invincible, until he meets his match in duplicity. In a moment of self-loathing, Nix decides that only love can save him from complete amorality. He seeks his salvation in Monika, a green-eyed femme fatale who spins a wild tale of her Gypsy ancestry and then robs him blind. Half-deranged by love, Nix chases her across Central Europe, himself pursued by a Czech detective wise to his grift and by a cuckolded Hungarian cop who wants to kill him. When he finds Monika and her brother working another con in Budapest, he realizes that to win Monika's heart he must first murder her brother. To hesitate is cowardice - he'll never again find a woman so well matched to his dark spirit. Unaware of the depths of Monika's depravity, Nix plunges headlong into a love affair that could just as easily destroy as save him.