When Detective Heinz Noonan arrives in Spokane to investigate a simple case of double obituaries, he has no idea he’s about to uncover the largest legal theft in American history.
The “Bearded Holmes” of North Carolina finds himself caught between two seemingly unrelated mysteries: elderly cancer patients dying in Switzerland with their fortunes mysteriously vanished, and a sophisticated mortgage scheme that’s somehow completely legal. But when lawyer Pietro Gretler begins targeting Noonan’s dying father-in-law with psychological warfare, the case becomes devastatingly personal.
Gift mortgages. Two words that represent a trillion-dollar loophole allowing banks to legally steal taxpayer money while enriching a select few.
From the ghost towns on the Canadian border to the wealthy enclaves of Washington State, Noonan discovers a web of corruption involving oncologists, bankers, and lawyers who prey on the dying and desperate. Working with Washington State Trooper Bill Bankhead and reluctant insider Shirley Jameson, Noonan races to expose the Octopus Cabal and the Gretler family’s empire before more victims are drained of their life savings.
But how do you prosecute a crime that isn’t technically illegal? How do you fight an enemy who hides behind legitimate paperwork while destroying families? As his father-in-law suffers under Pietro’s relentless harassment and fake federal investigations, Noonan must choose between backing down to protect his family or pursuing justice for countless victims who died believing their loved ones would inherit their legacy—only to discover their assets had vanished into Swiss bank accounts.
Steve Levi masterfully blends detective fiction with devastating social commentary, exposing a real financial scandal hiding in plain sight. While the characters are fictional, gift mortgages are terrifyingly real—a legal mechanism that has already cost American taxpayers an estimated $1.6 trillion.
Part police procedural, part financial thriller, The Matter of Gift Mortgages will leave readers questioning everything they thought they knew about the American banking system. In a world where the biggest thieves wear suits and the greatest crimes are perfectly legal, Detective Noonan proves that sometimes the only way to serve justice is to expose the truth.
