'The Bimbo Syndicate' by Maggie Abbott

Saxon, Ming and Heba, glamorous girlfriends of three ruthless power brokers in the international oil industry, become instant friends over a broken zipper in the ladies' room of a five-star Paris hotel during an OPEC conference. They don't realize they've been set up. Nor that they're being stalked by a sexy young assassin on the payroll of Ming's tough old billionaire Chinese banker. He's competing with Saxon's charming but wily Washington lobbyist and Heba's gorgeous but sinister Saudi Prince for the Grand Prize. Control of the world's oil supply. Rumors abound that their precious Light Sweet Crude is running out, and only an elusive genius scientist, Doctor Hilda Lobinski, knows the facts. When the three smart career women catch on to the cunning plot they dub themselves The Bimbo Syndicate and set up their own agenda. Things go wrong. Pulling all their strings from his lonely exile is a former White House insider with his eyes on the money and a gruesome plan to grab it all. It's election year 2000, the atmosphere is heating up with the excitement of shifting powers and the deployment of dirty tricks. But the big movers know there's more to it than just getting elected, it's where the oil is that has their attention. And whoever owns the oil owns the world.

Read an excerpt:

What came out of the toilets was neither the punk boy nor I.Beam. Just an average punk chick in a blackish purple wig and tiny skirt, breasts bulging against the tight black tee shirt. She strode out, cigarette between dark painted lips, the little round blue shades giving her face an impish look, and she went on striding until she'd left the building, swinging her bag all the way. 

I.Beam walked unnoticed around the crowded block and across the parking lot until she reached a rented Toyota ready to drive her away to the private place where she could turn herself back into Iris Tovey Ph.D. A free woman at last, with a new life. 

What I.Beam hadn't counted on in her tight little script was that, without it being a coincidence at all, there was another woman at Minotaur who was putting on an act, with Dash as the leading man. 

Saxon was pretending to be a rock video director that night and she'd just captured on tape the stunning end to a man's life. It was Dash, the man she'd been watching for three days, and what happened was a great shock to her. Through the camera lens she hadn't realized at first that a killing had taken place. She thought he'd fallen heavily, then perhaps hit his head. She used the zoom to look closer at the man on the floor and knew with a horrible zap in her stomach that he was actually dead. There was a knife sticking out of his throat and blood beginning to pool up around him. 

All she could think of was how this would go down with Hilda Lobinski.

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About the author:

Maggie Abbott started writing novels when she moved to Palm Springs after a long, successful show business career in Los Angeles, London, Rome, and New York.

A casual job as a secretary at the William Morris Agency in Rome introduced her to the exciting scene of Cleopatra, Fellini's 8½ and The Pink Panther, with the city's influx of big stars calling by the office every day, and triggered her lifelong love affair with movies.

Over the years, Maggie has enjoyed being in the most interesting places at the best of their times, while working as the movie agent for some exciting stars: Mick Jagger, David Bowie, Charlotte Rampling, Jacqueline Bisset, Martin Sheen, Raquel Welch, Christopher Plummer, Robert Redford, Mia Farrow, Peter Sellers, Richard Chamberlain, Peter O'Toole, Britt Ekland, Ken Russell, John Boorman, and many more.

Somewhere in between, Maggie was the production assistant on three Broadway plays, and a producer and studio executive at Columbia Pictures where she developed and got production credits on two movies.