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Spunky financial feature writer Karen Glick is back for another hair-raising outing in Lawrence Light’s new thriller FEAR AND GREED. Karen works for Profit Magazine, a publication very much like Forbes, where Light himself works when he’s not writing novels. As the story begins, Karen has just published a profile of the Reiner sisters, who have suddenly become very rich as a result of a program they developed that can predict the stock market. She’s also working on an anonymous tip that leads her to believe that Jack Faff, a fabulously wealthy and influential Donald Trump-look-alike character, is actually teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. In short order, Flo, the youngest of the sisters and the computer expert of the trio, is murdered and Goldring, the stock-picking program, is stolen. For security reasons the sisters decided to keep only one copy of the program on an innocuous-looking IBM Think Pad. They reasoned that the more copies of the software that existed, the more likely the program would be copied by others eager to profit from an easy get-rich-quick scheme. Because Karen has so recently interviewed the sisters and enjoys a good rapport with them, she is assigned to report on Flo’s murder. One of the conditions of her assignment is that she not be assisted by Frank Vere, the magazine’s star investigative reporter, who has helped Karen in the past. The editors want to know whether the great story she wrote about the Billionaire Boys Club, which is chronicled in the first book in the series, TOO RICH TO LIVE, was a fluke, or if Karen really is a good investigative reporter. Karen quickly hooks up with Linda, the glamorous stockbroker sister, and begins to work on her story. When they start to get some leads that might allow them to track down the murderer and the missing program, it’s not long before they both become targets of some pretty nefarious characters. Jack Faff is one of them, of course. He’s hoping that by getting his hands on the program he’ll be able to come up with enough cash to stave off his financial problems. When Faff takes Karen for a drive in his Jaguar, it quickly becomes the occasion of some particularly hair-raising action. The other major contender for the title of murderer and thief is Kingston Wooton, the head of the shadowy Authority, an anti-terrorist organization reporting directly to the President of the United States. Wooton is having problems at home and hopes to win back his wife by making a fortune with the help of Goldring. Thrown into this rich stew are Eastern European mafia goons, traitorous ex-employees and even the priest who stood to gain a lot from Flo’s death. And all of them, it seems, are out to stop Karen from getting to the truth about what happened to Goldring. FEAR AND GREED is filled with non-stop action, intriguing characters, a likeable protagonist, a particularly twisty plot and some very nicely done background on financial journalism. Though there are many, many bodies and lots of bloody scenes, Light treats it all with his tongue firmly planted in his cheek. Treading the line between cozy and thriller with grace and style, FEAR AND GREED makes a very nice airplane read.
Reviewed by Carroll Johnson, October 2006
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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