A MATTER OF WILL

This seventh novel by a Manhattan attorney is a high-finance thriller spattered with bloody surprises.

Will Matthews is a struggling investment broker at Wall Street’s Maeve Grant. If he fails a second time to make his quarterly numbers, he will automatically be fired. Wolfe, his aptly named boss, can’t wait to show him the door. But then like manna from heaven, Samuel Abbadon and Eve Devereaux strike up a friendship with Matthews at a Rangers-Devils hockey game and soon take him to a restaurant where Abbadon casually foots the $12,000 tab. His profession? “I am a collector of things of great value.” Matthews is both flattered and dazzled. Then Abbadon says he can see the hunger in the broker’s eyes. Matthews replies, “I’m not just hungry, Sam. I’m downright starving to death.” So Abbadon saves Matthews’ job by giving him an $18 million account that will make him a star at Maeve Grant. “I reeled in my whale,” Matthews tells a colleague. Nearly overnight he’s filthy rich and moving into an opulent Manhattan apartment Abbadon has bought for him. Alarm bells peal in his head, but at first they can’t match the choruses of hallelujah. By the time he realizes that of course it’s all too good to be true, there's no going back. The only places “Mr. Wall Street” can escape to may be prison or the morgue. In a subplot, Gwen Lipton is a hotshot lawyer on a high-profile murder case who meets Matthews through a dating app and becomes entangled in his briar patch of troubles. It’s too bad, because they might have a future together if they can only survive the shocks. Readers may wonder why Lipton doesn’t bolt when she still can, and the resolution feels a bit abrupt, but those are nits.

Business, blood, and deception help make this an exciting and fast-moving yarn. Fine fare for thriller fans.