Silent Partner
Financial chicanery is Stephen Frey's forte, and in his newest thriller  (followingThe InsiderandThe Day Trader), he  sets up one of the world's richest men and a young bank executive, who's trying  to wrest custody of her son from her well-connected ex-husband, in a sting  operation to expose blatant racism in the mortgage practices of a big Virginia  financial institution. Angela Day, whose African American college roommate died  in her arms after a racially motivated attack, is a gutsy and appealing woman  whose life is turned upside down when she gets involved with Jake Lawrence, a  billionaire with his own reasons for wanting to expose the corruption at the  core of the bank that employs her. When he offers her the chance to get her son  back, she plunges into a world of double-dealing where nothing and no one are  what they seem and everyone's motives are suspect. Some of the coincidences  strain credulity, and the characters are too one-dimensional to care about, but  Frey makes the most of his convoluted plot and wraps up the details with an  unexpected love story.--Jane Adams