“Murder By Conceit” is the debut novel of the Blake/Garnier murder mystery series. Set in New York City, Moscow, and Prague in the Czech Republic, the plot centers around the Renaissance Group, a private equity firm with enough financial and political clout to shape world events. The two main characters, life-partners Jacob Blake and Natasha Garnier, are, against their will, coerced out of retirement to rejoin Renaissance and its seductive and corruptive atmosphere by being told they are next on a hit-list that has claimed the lives of three of their former colleagues. Battling conspiracies and duplicity, they race against the clock to untangle a complex “murder for hire” scheme. It quickly becomes apparent that Natasha must reconcile her past with the Russian mafia and the Russian intelligence agency, the GRU, in order to buy Jacob the time he needs to prevent his own execution by convincing the killer to cancel the hit contract; a cancelation that would cost the killer millions of dollars and a lifetime in prison.