Supernotes by Agent Kasper and Luigi Carletti treads too uncertain a line between its “Thriller” subtitle and its “Based on True Events” tagline. Here’s an excerpt from my review in the Washington Post:
Supernotes are counterfeit $100 bills, primarily in circulation in Asia and produced so superbly that they thwart even the most advanced detection methods. But the new book Supernotes takes that description even further: “Authentic banknotes, but printed in a place that’s not the U.S. Mint. And therefore false? No. Different. But real.”
The source of these counterfeit c-notes is central to this new thriller. But the story focuses more extensively on the detention, imprisonment and torture of an Italian man in a Cambodian prison. We follow his struggles to escape while his family’s attorney in Rome works to obtain his release. As the story shuttles between the horrors of prison life and the frustrations of legal maneuvering, it also weaves back and forth in time to reveal the prisoner’s history and the events that led to his incarceration.