Nothing Personal: A Novel of Wall Street
Warren Hament seems to have it all, including a good tennis game, thanks to his tennis pro father. After getting respectable grades at Brown, he aces the GMAT, sails through Columbia Business School, and lands a job at prestigious Wall Street investment firm Weldon Brothers. He’s soon a superstar, setting a record for new salesmen at Weldon, but he feels cheated when his first-year bonus is only a half-million dollars. When his immediate boss and an associate are murdered in presumably random attacks, it’s Warren, with the most to gain from their deaths, who becomes a suspect, airtight alibis aside. And then there were those two women in business school with him who suffered fatal accidents. Offit, a former head trader at Goldman Sachs, knows his way around the ruthless world of high finance, in which the only thing that counts is money, and the only ethic is don’t get caught. It’s an appropriate setting for an intriguing thriller, but the novel’s rushed conclusion leaves the reader feeling unsatisfied. A good choice for Wall Street aficionados but marginal for other mystery fans. --Michele Leber