Aphrodesia
by John Oehler
Category: Fiction

Eric Foster, the top student at the best perfume school in France, creates a scent based on the fragrance the Queen of Sheba wore to seduce King Solomon. When he tests it surreptitiously at a gathering of glitterati in Paris, the results surpass his wildest dreams. It's an aphrodisiac of astonishing potency.Eric sees fame and fortune on his horizon, until he is kicked out of the school for a theft he did not commit. Disgraced and miserable, he now slogs through a mind-numbing job with a New York manufacturer of fragrance additives for supermarket products. His only respite comes from moonlighting - with his three-legged bloodhound, Daisy - as a forensic scent expert for the NYPD. But when a knockoff of his perfume surfaces as the only link in a series of passion-driven homicides, Eric becomes the prime suspect. Desperate to prove his innocence, he reluctantly teams up with Tanya, a sardonic chemist from the Crime Lab, to find the counterfeiter and decipher why the knockoff is killing people.Eric's quest pits him against violent adversaries on three continents. In the battle for survival, his one advantage is his extraordinary sense of smell.Aphrodesia was a quarter-finalist in the 2012 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award competition.