Character Creation #4 - Luc Manzel of 'Where Lemons Bloom'

In Romantic Suspense, the bad guy is almost as important as the hero. I think through his character, from his childhood. What made him what he is?

Luc Manzel

Luc Manzel grows up in the streets of Chicago. He starts out as the youngest member of a gang that specializes in first pick-pocketing and then he graduates to armed robbery. A narrow escape with the law frightens him enough to make him back off. His parents, terrified of what might happen to their son, send him to New York where, living with an aunt, he manages to get through high school with outstanding grades and go on to college and then law school on scholarships. 

But inside, the lawyer is the same person who had enjoyed intimidating people and finding quick ways of padding his pockets. He occasionally acts as legal advisor to some of the top Mafia in New York. Luc has connections and the means for getting the funds into offshore accounts. By this time, he has grown a veneer of polish and an aura of self-confidence.

He is hired as an in-house lawyer to Conti Corporation, a large conglomerate that occupies a whole high-rise office building in New York.

Sleekly handsome, (think the young Al Pacino), everything about Luc seems polished, from his never rumpled suits (Armani), to his well-polished hand-made Italian shoes.  He is soft spoken and dangerous. He doesn’t normally carry a gun but he knows well how to use one. He has been Monica’s lover for three years. The scheme to rid her of her husband and end up with the money is at least in part his. 

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Watch for Blair's newest thriller, Fatal Charm 

Coming in 2017

Blair McDowell's latest tale of Suspense  takes the reader to Italy's  beautiful Amalfi Coast.

"Adamo and Eve are two people who have both been through their own versions of hell. They are both certain that they are not ready to enter into a relationship, but love finds them anyway. Then it takes them on the non-stop thrill ride of their lives."

-   Marlene Harris, readingitall.com

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When Eve Anderson meets Adamo de Leone on a ship bound for Europe, she has no idea of the dark secret that will endanger both their lives. She accompanies him to his home on Italy’s Amalfi Coast to open an inn left to him by his grandfather. But then she learns he spent 5 years in prison for a crime he claims he didn’t commit. Could the man she loves be responsible for embezzling eighty million dollars from the investment firm he once owned?

Adamo wants to hold Eve at arm’s length until he can clear his proud family name. But when there is an attempt on his life and Eve is terrorized by a gun-bearing thug, he realizes how much he wants her, and he must accept whatever help he can get to uncover the well-hidden trail of a six-year-old crime.
 

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