Description
Greed, envy, resentment-motivations for money laundering, murder and another successful perfume.
The extraordinary success of Orgasme, the first fragrance created by Jean-Pierre Armand, one of the world's leading fashion designers, attracts the attention of Joe Regalia, a small time player in the import-export business. Joe obtains financial backing from his boyhood friends, Tony Marino, head of the largest crime family in New York, and Sam Risen, outwardly a respectable attorney, but secretly, Tony's silent partner, to import and distribute Orgasme through the gray market in the United States as a vehicle to launder the Organization's illicit income.
Motivated by greed and envy, and unbeknownst to his partners, Joe decides to also sell counterfeit Orgasme, which brings more attention to this illegal business. Leading the fight against the gray market and counterfeiting is Bryan Thomas, President of Aberdeen, Ltd., Orgasme's manufacturer. Concerned about the publicity Bryan is generating and its potential impact on the Organization's money laundering operation, Sam sets out to silence him.
Meanwhile, seething with life-long resentment, believing he is the real genius behind Jean-Pierre's success, Philippe Chaudée, his lover and cunning, driven business manager, is secretly moving ahead with plans to establish a new fashion house under his own name to sponsor young aspiring designers--with or without Jean-Pierre's concurrence.
Paris, New York, Washington, and Zurich provide the principal backdrops for this complex unfolding drama in which murder is the fashion of choice by those driven to let no one stand in their way.