HEIR APPARENT brings back, Joel Smith, the hero from DELIVERABLES, for another investigative adventure.  In this story, Joel finds himself plunged into a world of fundamentally flawed business executives, all fighting to gain the upper hand.

"Many executives long to become the boss, the leader of their corporation.  But only one person gets to fill that role, and opportunities to succeed the CEO of a successful company are few and far between.  Execs battle one another, hoping to hold the unofficial title of 'Heir Apparent.'

In a large Midwestern city, one Heir Apparent is about to slip off the CEO track.  Permanently.

There is still time to stop it, but at quite a cost.  By carefully eliminating the cause of the coming derailment, the executive can even speed the succession process.  Doing so, however, requires multiple murders of a sort so foul, they terrorize the entire corporate community and captivate the media.

Thus, the Kansas City CEO Serial Killer is born.

Joel Smith, a retired CIA field operative, is hired by George Crawford, CEO of Sangreen Industries, to make sure he doesn’t become the killer's next victim.  Smith works closely on the case with Evangelina (Van) Sikes, a homicide detective and savant working for KCPD.  As the FBI digs into the serial killer concept, Smith and Sikes alone continue to pursue the theory that the killer is a close business associate of one of the first two victims.

As the pair close in on the killer, the stakes get higher.  Eventually, they become targets themselves."

HEIR APPARENT was inspired by a what-if question.  What if an executive who was in line to get the top job, discovered that the only way it was going to happen was to kill the boss?  Could it work?  How would they do it?  I've used this concept, along with profiles of a number of classic corporate types (many of whom I've seen in action throughout my career) to weave a story of betrayal, violence, and off-the-chart ambition.