The novel “The Sigma Conspiracy” by Lee Gimenez was published for the first time in 2014 and then in a new edition with a different cover in 2020. It’s the first book of the J.T. Ryan series.
Someone is printing fake dollars of such high quality that they’re almost impossible to distinguish from the real thing. To make matters worse, these extraordinary fakes are being printed in large quantities and put into circulation in the USA. This has started creating problems for the national economy, so both the FBI and the Secret Service are investigating.
FBI Special Agent Erin Welch has an important role in the investigation but to obtain crucial information to discover the authors of the counterfeits, she has to resort to unorthodox methods. She hires J.T. Ryan, a private detective who doesn’t have to abide by rules and jurisdictional boundaries in an investigation with international ramifications.
The history of counterfeiting money is ancient, and in an era in which banknotes can have a high value, in many nations (or supranational entities in cases such as the Euro), various technologies are being used to make them difficult to counterfeit. If someone managed to print high-quality counterfeit banknotes in large quantities, it could cause an increase in inflation and end up destabilizing a nation’s economy. Even in a time when Americans normally pay with credit cards, it could be a very serious problem.
Lee Gimenez imagines a very sophisticated and complex criminal operation that begins with the mass production of counterfeit dollars with negative consequences for the American economy. The important people involved in this operation work secretly and to track them down, Special Agent Erin Welch uses J.T. Ryan’s services.
From the beginning, the author shows J.T. Ryan’s unorthodox methods, which are ideal for investigating where official representatives of American government agencies may have trouble reaching. With his experience, which also comes from a military past, Ryan can handle difficult and intense situations that are often risky. In several cases, that’s what makes the difference between life and death since he doesn’t hesitate to get into trouble. He often gets his girlfriend worried and he always tries to minimize even the worst dangers, sometimes using dubious humor.
The plot also follows the points of view of some of the criminals involved in what quickly turns out to be an international conspiracy that has ramifications that are slowly revealed. There are various economic and even political issues at stake, but “The Sigma Conspiracy” is above all an action novel. J.T. Ryan leaves the analysis, economic or other types, to others to focus on gathering information and identifying the criminals involved in the conspiracy.
The novel shows very well the international dimension of the cases that J.T. Ryan works on in collaboration with Erin Welch. In this case, traces take him to Italy and Mexico, where he has some unofficial support from American agencies. However, on some occasions, he’s forced to fend for himself, especially when he goes well beyond what any agent can be authorized to do. He also does this by improvising the actions he deems useful to obtain results.
“The Sigma Conspiracy” is told by Lee Gimenez with a dry style that is excellent for readers who love action-packed thrillers with a very fast pace and plots with many twists. It has a standalone story and a real ending, so you can read it and then decide if and when to continue with the novels in this series that the author wrote in the following years. It’s available on Amazon USA, UK, and Canada.
