Is this possible to do with Google places?

Hey all,

I recently landed a local client who wants me to rank his website for 20 keywords out which 7 of them are triggering maps. I dont have a lot of experience with google maps although I have worked on it in the past but I have a few questions :

1. How difficult is to rank above the maps , not in the map listing , but above the maps . Most of the keywords have search results above the maps and was wondering what kind of effort is required to rank the website above the map listings.

2. Alternatively,what I was thinking of doing was to create 7 websites, rank them in Google maps and either redirect them to my clients website OR iframe the website with my clients website. Is this safe to do ? I am aware that Google is particularly pleased with redirects and this is concerning me a little bit.

Thanks a lot in advance and i would really appreciate any and all kind of information regarding this.

Cheers