Review: High Finance and Low Morals
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 05 31, 2014
White collar crime may bring the Bernie Madoffs of the real world big money, but, in the fictional crime drama universe, it's usually been viewed as small potatoes. Until now, that is. Martin Nalitz treats his readers to another book length exploration of the highs and lows of financial fraud by his ex-con semi-reformed white collar crook Jack Reno in the delightful and entertaining novel, "Wrestling with Gorillas."Since Reno's back story is far from the norm for this type of literature, Nalitz provides readers with a fairly thorough recounting of the exploits that landed Reno in jail, namely, some shady market manipulation which led to some fraudulent financial reporting. Readers also get some insight into Reno's moral code, such as it is, since he doesn't view what he did as being all that bad. When he gets out of jail, Reno lands a job as a paralegal working for the ex-D.A. who put him away who is now a hot shot defense attorney. The new job allows Reno legally to help represent a lot of his fellow criminals on the outside, when their business dealings, both legal and illegal, go sour.In this book, Reno tries to help out two former prison mates of his, a Denver inner city crime lord whose operation is under fire both from the federal government and some Chechen mobsters, and an ex-con turned infomercial huckster millionaire who finds himself the victim of a cyber blackmailer. Although there are a couple of killings and a few beat downs in the book, the story primarily revolves around Reno's attempts to figure out the financial end of the criminal goings on and, eventually, do some fancy wheeling and dealing to help his friends out.In actuality, the plot of "Gorillas" is somewhat secondary, and long stretches of the book go by without much happening to advance the plot. However, the book is far from dull. Nalitz fills in the gaps with plenty of stories from Reno about life in prison, life in the city of Denver, and the world of white collar fraud. Since the author himself did time in prison for some similar financial crimes, the material seems quite authentic and is often fascinating to read. Nalitz knows enough to avoid getting in a rut about any one topic and keeps reader interest high. He also throws in a most unusual romance as Reno begins to get chummy with a female state legislator whose image will definitely not be helped by being associated with a character like him.The book actually has two climaxes, one good and one not so good. Once Reno figures out what's going on, he has to do some fast thinking to save his own skin and outwit the bad guys (relieving them of a substantial amount of ill gotten money in the process). Nalitz describes the action in terms that most readers will have no trouble following, leading to a most enjoyable outcome. Unfortunately, Nalitz then has to have Reno go into man-to-man action against some fairly nasty thugs. Since Reno has gotten a good bit of martial arts training in the slammer, he's capable of handling himself well, but describing fisticuffs is not Nalitz's strength and the last few pages of the book wobble quite a bit.Despite the somewhat clumsy staging of the action scenes, the vast majority of the book is a lot of fun to read. Jack Reno (like his creator Martin Nalitz) is a natural born storyteller, and readers will enjoy letting Reno pass the time with them. They will have even more fun once they realize just how Reno is turning the tables on the bad guys. The best thing about "Gorillas" is that Nalitz' material is quite fresh and Nalitz and Reno seem to have only skimmed the surface of depicting and describing financial skullduggery. Hopefully readers will get a chance to see Jack Reno get himself in and out of a lot more schemes like those in "Gorillas."