BOOK REVIEW: Making a 'Killing' in the Market Is More Than Just a Saying in Financial Thriller 'Shakedown'
Reviewed By David M. Kinchen
Huntingtonnews.net Book Critic
Thomas Hollister is literally the face of San Francisco's Sledd Payne Corp., a gigantic if fictional financial firm in Andie Ryan's debut financial thriller "Shakedown" (Lenox Road Publishing, 421 pages, $23.95 hardbound, $15.95 paperback, available on Amazon.com). He was hired thirty years ago for his youthful handsomeness and his likeness is plastered all over the city, on billboards and the sides of buses. Think actor Sam Waterston ("Law & Order") for TD Ameritrade, only even more conventionally handsome.
Hollister is in competition with Marcus Edison for the top job at Sledd Payne, with Edison having the edge because of his rainmaker status at the firm. Hollister is the favorite of Chairman John Windham, but the decision is up to the board.
All three have secrets in their past -- and present -- and all are flawed in one way or another. To reveal more would spoil the book for readers who want to find out for themselves, so I'll say this: Read this novel and see how aberrant behavior can develop in a business environment. Beyond aberrant and into deadly territory! The arrogance of powerful people knows few bounds, as recent events have shown. Powerful people in business and politics have acted as if they're above the law because they're wearing $5,000 suits and live in fancy suburbs.
Ryan has two decades of experience at major financial firms, so when she writes a novel about insider trading and fraud at a financial firm, the narrative rings true. She probably knows enough to create a scam similar to that portrayed in "Shakedown"!
In publicity material accompanying my review copy, Ryan writes: "'Shakedown's" plot is scarily plausible. But a key question arising from this story isn't so much why real scandals continue to occur in the aftermath of sweeping regulation, but why they don't surface more often. We read about payoffs to accountants and legal loopholes and regulators looking the other way, and we think this is new. How many of us are really immune to bribes or job threats? How many of us think we can afford to say no when we're asked to do something illegal?"
This makes the already frightened investor even more wary of financial institutions melting down like objects in a Salvador Dali painting.
The third season of the TV series "Damages" currently features a Bernard Madoff-like figure named Louis Tobin, played by the great actor Len Cariou, with Campbell Scott as his son and Lily Tomlin as his wife. Andie Ryan's novel set in 2004, has plot elements as sensational as "Damages," making one believe in Balzac's famous statement that "Behind every great fortune is a crime." (Actually, according to Google Answers, Balzac said, in English translation: "The secret of a great success for which you are at a loss to account is a crime that has never been found out, because it was properly executed.")
The crime in "Shakedown" almost went undetected, except for the efforts of a young woman analyst mentored by Hollister. Either way, novels like "Shakedown" and books like Andrew Ross Sorkin's "Too Big to Fail" certainly don't inspire my confidence in the nation's financial system. The arrogance of the "masters of the universe" in Sorkin's book makes me want to commit violence, and I'm a non-violent kind of guy!
About the author: Andie Ryan is working on a sequel to "Shakedown." She works as an independent management consultant focusing on regulatory and operational requirements for broker dealers. Her web site is: www.andieryan.com.