First Lie Wins: A Conspiracy Thriller - Paperback

by Erika Berlanga (Author)

When Jonas Adler is framed by a cartel for a crime built from his own professional fingerprints, he must use the only weapon he has left - his mind - to dismantle a conspiracy that reaches all the way inside the institution hunting him, in this propulsive thriller set in the shadowed heart of Berlin.

Adler is a precise man, methodical and quietly brilliant. He has a partner he loves, a sister he would die for, and a hard-earned reputation as one of Berlin's most trusted forensic accountants - a man who has built his career, and his identity, on the unshakeable belief that the numbers never lie.

However, when a routine audit of a Luxembourg investment vehicle called Vestia Capital lands on his desk, Adler begins to notice something in the financial architecture that was never meant to be found. Before he can act on what he has discovered, he is arrested at dawn on a Berlin pavement and charged with laundering 4.2 million in cartel funds - through his own client files, using his own credentials, bearing his own digital signature on every transaction. The evidence is immaculate. It is also entirely fabricated. And the man overseeing his prosecution is the same man who built the system Jonas accidentally uncovered.

Adler has no institution to turn to, no authority he can trust, and no way to prove his innocence without going deeper into the conspiracy that destroyed him. With his firm collapsing, his freedom expiring, and the cartel's patience running out, he is left with a single impossible choice: become the thing he has spent his entire career exposing, or lose everything he has ever built.

And even that may not be enough.