Description:

From Publishers Weekly

Bestseller Grippando's overwrought financial thriller gives its hero, Michael Cantella, almost as rude an awakening as Kafka's Gregor Samsa. Scandals involving subprime lending, short selling, and Ponzi schemes provide a timely backdrop. On the eve of his 35th birthday, Cantella goes from being a star performer at a premier Wall Street investment firm to a financially wiped-out victim of identity theft. His Job-like troubles are just beginning as the fallout not only rocks his second marriage and his firm but sets him up for a life on the run. Grippando (_Intent to Kill_) keeps the reader guessing why Cantella specifically is targeted and how the vicious and relentless personal attacks relate to the unexplained disappearance (and presumed death) of his first wife on their wedding day seven years earlier. Despite a few plot holes, the dramatic tension remains high with a sadistic hired killer, high-stakes wheeler-dealers, and plenty of cinematic escapes. (Mar.)
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From

Grippando’s new stand-alone has a setup that feels a bit familiar: an investment banker impulsively marries his girlfriend, who promptly disappears; several years later, he’s shocked to discover that all of his accounts have suddenly been wiped out, the funds transferred to an offshore bank via an account set up in his dead wife’s name. Luckily Grippando is a skilled writer (his stand-alones are generally more interesting than his Jack Swyteck series), and he works enough variations on the familiar theme to keep us guessing. The novel’s protagonist, Michael Cantella, is a solidly defined character in the business-thriller mold, and the supporting cast ranges from coldly manipulative to warmly—but perhaps deceptively—friendly. The plot is mostly straightforward but with enough small twists and unexpected shifts to keep readers from feeling like they’ve read all this before. Recommend this one to fans of Joseph Finder’s Paranoia (2004), Company Man (2005), or Power Play (2007)—all novels in which the hero is suddenly cut adrift from his friends, his colleagues, and his sense of his own life. --David Pitt