Mangoes for Fools wraps a gripping murder mystery around a gritty look at the brutality that poverty brings to daily life in Haiti, one of the poorest nations on the planet.

The book’s central character is Ken Carlton, a venture capitalist and expert marksman who has used his brains and near-obsessive sense of discipline to escape a dirt-poor Texas town and become a corporate takeover master.

Ken’s life from an early age has always been about cold calculation, ambition, control and making money, until he receives a fateful phone call informing him that his estranged father has been murdered in Haiti. Ken discovers that as indifferent bystanders watched, several gunmen assassinated his father in broad daylight.

The call triggers a series of events that wrench him out of his self-absorbed chase for wealth and success.

Arriving in Haiti, Ken meets a local detective, StJuste, who is assigned to investigate his father’s murder. StJuste gives Ken an insider’s tour of Haiti’s sights and smells. He also introduces Ken to a society divided between a wealthy few and masses living in extreme poverty.

Yanked out of his comfort zone and into circumstances both deeply foreign and out of his control, Ken begins to investigate his father’s murder—an intense endeavor that threatens his own life but also transforms him as a person and businessman.