A gripping novel that vividly captures the dark cosmos of financial malfeasance.
An investigative reporter is granted the opportunity to join the elite world of billionaires in Nesbit’s crime novel.
Seth Thomas, a seasoned reporter for the Washington Post, is deflated by the decline of journalism in America and fed up with a “viciously amoral financial and digital world” that scorns the truth as unprofitable. “I was mentally exhausted constantly fighting the good fight. Who cared whether you got it right any longer? I did. But hardly anyone else in America seemed to. So what was the point?” Suddenly, he’s granted a unique point of access into the murky world of financial corruption: the chance to participate as a deep-pocketed investment mogul. Mysteriously, he is given an office, a secretary (the astonishingly talented Dotty Rungren), and an apparently unlimited bank account. Neither Seth nor Dotty have any idea who their anonymous benefactor might be (“it’s right across the street from the White House, so I figured it was for something important. I didn’t ask questions”), nor how much money available to them, though they are assured by bank representatives that their funds all but inexhaustible—a fantastical scenario artfully rendered plausible by the author. All of a sudden, Seth is a major financial player and becomes investment partners with Ivan Fedorisky, a vastly wealthy Russian entrepreneur with ties to the Russian mob. Seth decides to gamble his newfound wealth—$10 billion of it—to forge connections with the biggest, and presumably most corrupt, participants in the global financial market; the kinds of powerful people whose names showed up in the infamous Panama Papers. Finally, Seth will be faced with a terrible choice—he can pursue this extraordinary story, at the cost of considerable personal sacrifice, or he can secure the money—it doesn’t seem possible to do both.
Nesbit’s tale is a remarkable brew of mystery and political intrigue in which the protagonist explores a rarefied world of nihilistic corruption that includes the upper echelons of the American political class. Literary portrayals of this strange universe tend to be either comic-book fantasies brimming with melodramatic hyperbole or insipidly stale—the author here manages to realistically depict the shadowy corridors of wealth and power with electricity while avoiding gratuitous flights of fancy. Also, Seth is a mesmerizingly complex character, motivated, at least in part, by curiosity: “I had no desire to be a master of the universe. But some part of me wanted to test-drive it a bit. I wanted to see what the inside of that game looked like. Not because I wanted anything for myself, or because I wanted to write about it or expose it. I wanted to know.” The plot flirts with gratuitous complication bordering on convolution—any novel built around following a money trail threatens to devolve into an accounting puzzle. However, Nesbit has a strange talent for making this aspect seem playfully mysterious—rather than feeling stymied by bewilderment, the reader is more likely to feel inspired to think through the possibilities. This is an engrossing tale—thoughtful, worldly, and deeply entertaining.
A gripping novel that vividly captures the dark cosmos of financial malfeasance.Pub Date: June 13, 2023
ISBN: 9781610885980
Page Count: 280
Publisher: Bancroft Press
Review Posted Online: July 24, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Fast-moving excitement with a satisfying finish.
The feds must protect an accused criminal and an orphaned girl.
Maybe you’ve met him before as protagonist of The 6:20 Man (2022): Ex-Army Ranger Travis Devine, who’d had the dubious fortune to tangle with “the girl on the train,” is now assigned by his homeland security boss to protect Danny Glass, who's awaiting trial on multiple RICO charges in Washington state. Devine has what it takes: He “was a closer, snooper, fixer, investigator,” and, when necessary, a killer. These skills are on full display as the deaths of three key witnesses grind justice to a temporary halt. Glass has a 12-year-old niece, Betsy Odom, and each is the other’s only living relative—her parents recently died of an apparent drug overdose. The FBI has temporary guardianship of Betsy, who's a handful. She tells Travis that though she’s not yet 13, she's 28 in “life-shit years.” The financially well-heeled Glass wants to be her legal guardian with an eye to eventual adoption, but what are his real motives? And what happens to her if he's convicted? Meanwhile, Betsy insists that her parents never touched drugs, and she begs Travis to find out how they really died. This becomes part of a mission that oozes danger. The small town of Ricketts has a woman mayor who’s full of charm on the surface, but deeply corrupt and deadly when crossed. She may be linked to a subversive group called "12/24/65," as in 1865, when the Ku Klux Klan beast was born. Blood flows, bombs explode, and people perish, both good guys and not-so-good guys. Readers might ponder why in fiction as well as in life, it sometimes seems necessary for many to die so one may live. And what about the girl on the train? She's not necessary to the plot, but she's a fun addition as she pops in and out of the pages, occasionally leaving notes for Travis. Maybe she still wants him dead.
Fast-moving excitement with a satisfying finish.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2024
ISBN: 9781538757901
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2024
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