When Marshall met Hal, it was a match made in hell. Hal is a first class con man and manipulator. Marshall is the perfect pawn, a young guy who has been abused all his life, with no self confidence. Hal is pure evil, and he recognizes gold when he sees it. Marshall is handsome, gay and desperate to be loved and accepted. Hal is a former resident of the detention center where Marshall is living. He knows the unscrupulous director, who is deeply in debt with the mob. When the director is asked to do the mob a favor, a job that will set Hal up for life, Hal recruits Marshall to help him carry out his diabolic scheme. When Marshall meets the handsome young owner of a coffee plantation, his job is to seduce him, and secure the plantation for the mob. Marshall doesn’t truly understand that Angelo will have to die. Marshall is completely unprepared for Angelo, and completely unprepared for love, something in his sad life, he has never known. Hal is in the background making sure Marshall doesn’t stray from the plan…a plan that will succeed only if Marshall kills the man he loves. Passion and despair reign as Arsenic and Rio sweeps the reader away to a coffee plantation high in the mountains of Brazil, and to the warm sands of Rio.