Bottom Line
Hotshot salesman Nick Blake is the number-two man at international consulting and accounting firm Martell and Company and a friend and colleague of CEO Adrian Martell. But in early 2001, as the economy and the firm’s fortunes start going south, a split widens between the two men. Disagreements between them hit the press, in a story written by the business reporter Nick’s sleeping with, but that’s just the beginning. After Adrian is charged with insider trading and names Nick to succeed him, the “creative” (read fraudulent) accounting that Adrian put into practice, and Nick distanced himself from, threatens to come to light. And when Adrian takes off with $100 million held in trust for the firm’s partners, Nick goes after him, showing investigative skills that put the FBI to shame. Characters show limited dimension, and post-9/11 moralizing—“the Almighty’s destruction of our temples of Mammon”—doesn’t ring true. Still, Davis clearly knows his way around the worlds of big business and high finance, and a nifty epilogue provides an appropriate coda. --Michele Leber