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Young Nick Conover has worked hard to become the CEO of Stratton Corporation, a worldwide furniture manufacturing company. The city of Fenwick, Michigan, the place he grew up, loved that the popular young boy became the popular man that now runs Stratton. Over the years Stratton Corporation lost money and the company was sold to a conglomerate in Boston. They told Nick that costs had to come down and forced him to fire half of Stratton's 10,000 employees. Now, wherever he goes, Nick feels the town's hostility aimed towards him. The fact that Nick and his children live in a gated community in a grand, expensive house with a large outdoor pool doesn't make things any easier for him. Even though Nick's wife was recently killed in an automobile accident and his son and daughter are having problems coping with her loss, the community is still angry at Nick and blames him for the loss of the jobs. The Conover home is broken into, and even though their gated community is supposed to be secure, nothing is done to help them. When the family's dog is gruesomely murdered next to the pool, Nick asks Stratton's not very trustworthy head of security to help him out and extra security cameras are installed. But even that doesn't stop ex-employee, Andrew Stadler, from breaking into the house where a panicked and frightened Nick ends up shooting and killing the intruder. Instead of going to the police, Nick and Stratton's head of security get rid of the body and the gun. Now Nick waits in fear as the police questions everyone about Stadler's murder. And to top it off, the new bosses in Boston are making major changes at Stratton and not telling Nick about it. His job seems to be in peril. COMPANY MAN by Joseph Finder is a terrific book. The author manages to permit the readers to have mixed feelings about Nick's fate. Finder does a nice job in making Nick likable. And we are also led to understand why Nick murdered Stadler and we know that Nick has to pay for it, but he's still such a sympathetic person that we don't want anything too bad to happen to him. Even though Nick could have gone to the police, which would have easily ended the dead Stadler problem, it's clear that Finder had to keep the murder aspect of the story alive because it's so connected with Nick's new romantic interest. All of these details contribute to a multi-layered book that keeps you turning the pages. COMPANY MAN is a fast-paced, suspenseful thriller and a story not to be missed.
Reviewed by Sharon Katz, June 2005
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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