MANNING A RAPTOR

Assisting rebels, blackmailing senators, and engineering a Bolivian prison break—all in a day’s work for empire builder James Coppi.

Miles Cornish, the new controller for Coppi Enterprises, and a frustrated fiction writer, thinks that James Coppi and his wife, Samantha, would be swell subjects for a nonfiction book. As his wife encourages him, “I can’t imagine anyone that you can conjure up in your imagination that would be more exciting than the Coppis.” Exciting, yes, but plausible, not so much. The Coppis started out with only $500 (and that’s only because James gave his entire savings to the widow of a friend killed in Vietnam). Now, they are “living the good life” and own a Colorado Springs horse ranch “almost as big as the Island of Manhattan,” a 16th-century French château, and a global business empire so powerful it could overthrow governments. His latest public venture is expanding a railroad that encompasses the Southwest. James also has some secret initiatives as well as incidents from his past that have earned him some enemies. It is Cornish’s tome that makes up author Freda’s sprawling adventure. And even though the book’s last lines explain why the Coppis would authorize publication of their darkest secrets and deepest intrigues, it contains scenes and dialogue to which Cornish would not possibly be privy—even with the fullest cooperation from his subjects. But Coppi is quite a guy. “You’re very intimidating, James,” one character tells him. “People fear you….You have a knack of seeing things that aren’t as obvious to the common man.” Combine this improbable character with a breakneck pace and you have a ripping yarn in which there is, as Cornish notes, “never a dull moment.”

An implausible but entertaining and undemanding adventure.