It is 2001 in new york city, in the lull between the collapse of the dotcom boom and the terrible events of september 11th. Silicon alley is a ghost town, web 1. 0 is having adolescent angst, google has yet to ipo, microsoft is still considered the evil empire. There may not be quite as much money around as there was at the height of the tech bubble, but there's no shortage of swindlers looking to grab a piece of what's left. Maxine tarnow is running a nice little fraud investigation business on the upper west side, chasing down different kinds of small-scale con artists. She used to be legally certified but her licence got pulled a while back, which has actually turned out to be a blessing because now she can follow her own code of ethics - carry a beretta, do business with sleazebags, hack into people's bank accounts - without having too much guilt about any of it. Otherwise, just your average working mum - two boys in elementary school, an off-and-on situation with her sort of semi-
