Being the offspring of an iconic figure is a mixed blessing at
best. You spend half your time explaining who you are and the other
half explaining who you are not. There may be times, late at night,
when Peter Leonard lies awake in bed and contemplates how things
might have been if he was picking away at a guitar instead of a
word processor as a way of bringing home the daily bread. If that
is the case, I hope he does not think too long or too hard about
it. He made the right move, and trust me, his sophomore work
conclusively demonstrates that.
At the end of the day, TRUST ME is built upon a very basic
series of propositions: girl meets boy; girl and boy start seeing
each other (in the Biblical sense); girl gives boy $300,000 to
invest; girl and boy break up; boy keeps money; and girl tries to
get money back. You cannot imagine how much fun this truly is until
you crack open the spine. The girl of the piece is Karen Delaney, a
beautiful and talented young woman whose resume includes work as a
high school drum majorette and professional model and cheerleader,
and whose Achilles’ heel is a talent for picking the worst
man out of any random room full of them. The boy is Samir, a
wealthy Detroit businessman involved in legal high-end markets,
party stores and, oh yeah, illegal bookmaking.
As the novel begins, Delaney has moved on (at least
romantically), engaged (at least officially) to the owner of a
chain of Detroit area restaurants. When two burglars ---one of whom
is a little smarter than the other --- invade the domestic
tranquility of the not-really-happy couple, Delaney has a
proposition for them. As she puts it, she’s not scamming
them; she’s been waiting for them.
But as we soon learn, what Delaney tells them is only half-true.
With an amusing if cold-blooded pragmatism, Delaney begins
utilizing her not-too-shabby look