Choke on Your Lies — Anthony Neil Smith

With Choke on Your Lies, Smith presents his homage to one of his favorite detectives, Nero Wolfe, but written for the “internet porn” generation.

Octavia VanderPlatts is wealthy, powerful, and “comfortable with her weight” -- or to hear her say it, “a rich fat b****.” Her IQ is at the genius level, and she uses it to manipulate and frighten anyone who tries to get in her way. She controls an empire built on discrimination lawsuits won against some of the nation's top companies. On top of that, Octavia doesn't care one wink what people think of her.

So when she offers her old friend poetry professor Mick Thooft some help in his impending divorce, he smells an ulterior motive. Maybe because Frances didn't invite Octavia to the wedding for fear of her clearing the buffet. Not only does Octavia want to help, but she's got evidence -- plenty of scandalous photos. That's not Mick's style, so he turns her down flat...until he discovers that Fran's trying to take their home based on a near-perfect forgery of his signature. After that he and Octavia charge forward, but soon find they're in deeper than they realized -- robot pens, swinger clubs, and a blackmail scheme that holds an entire college faculty hostage.

Just when Mick and Octavia are on the cusp of victory, it all goes terribly wrong. Mick is framed for murder and someone targets Octavia's immense wealth and secret backyard greenhouse full of exotic marijuana. With no one on their side except Octavia's butler Jennings, her new personal chef Harriet, and their “Amazon Warrior” lawyer Pamela, Octavia and Mick must find a way to turn the tables before they end up broke, humiliated, and in prison.

Praise for CHOKE ON YOUR LIES:

“What a fantastic rip roaring read. Anthony Neil Smith makes a great case for going to college. If I had known it was so filled with sex, more sex, violence and wicked drama, I might have gone. Really. It is a subtly complex novel that treats its characters with respect even when they are acting completely awful.” -- Josh Stallings, author of Young Americans

“Anthony Neil Smith set his best book yet in one of the country's best known cesspools of corruption and wickedness: academia. There's enough viciousness, backstabbing and sexual depravity among Smith's small-college faculty to make Caligula look like an episode of The Little Rascals. Smith pulls off one of the hardest tricks in all of writing: he fascinates you with characters who, for the most part, are completely unlikable. And yet, you can't look away. Great book!” -- J.D. Rhoades, author of the Jack Keller series

“What a great book! Anthony Neil Smith riffs on the old Nero Wolfe novels, but completely makes it his own. This book has everything someone looks for in a crime novel. It's the kind of book that makes you want to take a shower after. You're going to cringe, laugh, and be blown away by the plot twists at the end.” -- Dave White, author of the Jackson Donne series

“Choke on Your Lies is a finely-plotted and deftly structured story of a cuckolded husband reluctantly evening the score with an uber be-atch of a wife. The prose sings and the story rings true as the fully-rounded characters slide in and out like an insane chorus of the ill-intentioned. Anthony Neil Smith is shaping up to be one of the sharpest exponents of American noir. Not to be missed.” -- Tony Black, author of the DI Bob Valentine series