The Lady Waiting : A Novel

One bright Los Angeles day, a young Polish emigree named Viva is driving along the freeway when she''s flagged down by a dazzling, disheveled woman in green chiffon. The woman is Bobby Sleeper, a fellow Eastern European and erstwhile art gallerist with a mysterious background and even more mysterious filmmaker husband. Within days the couple hire Viva as their assistant, then enlist her as an accomplice in an improbable scheme involving a long-lost Vermeer masterwork, a multi-million-dollar reward, and several shadowy ex-husbands. As Bobby and her husband weave her ever more tightly into their web, Viva is swept up in an escapade that''s one part art heist, one part love triangle, and one part education of a felon. Entranced by their lifestyle, alarmed by their ramshackle scam, Viva realises she''s out of her depth-and that only luck, cunning, and her own hustler''s instinct can save her from disaster. Careening from the canyons of LA to the canals of Venice, The Lady Waiting is a gleefully bawdy Swiftian caper, a cavalcade of 21st century sins-rapacious capitalism, shameless fraud, and atrocious behavior-and a showcase for three of the biggest and most unforgettable characters in recent fiction.