Long Way Down
-
- $9.99
Publisher Description
From the author of the acclaimed, award-winning debut novel Black Fridays, comes a story of murder, greed, and corruption—and the lengths to which one man will go for his family.
He approached me in the street—bone-thin, gray-bearded, holding out a small envelope. “The man said you’d give me five bucks for it.” Inside was a one-word message: RUN.
Two years in a federal prison has changed Jason Stafford, is still changing him, but one thing it has taught him as a financial investigator is how to detect a lie. He doesn’t think Philip Haley is lying. An engineer on the verge of a biofuel breakthrough, Haley has been indicted for insider trading on his own company, and Stafford believes him when he says he’s been set up. Haley does indeed have enemies. He is not a nice man. Doesn’t make him a criminal.
It does make him dangerous to be around, though. The deeper Stafford investigates, the more secrets he starts to uncover, secrets people would kill for. And that’s exactly what happens. Soon, it is Stafford himself who is under attack and, worse, his family—his fiancée, his young son—and he is a fugitive, desperately trying to stay one step ahead of both the killers and the law.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In Sears's uneven third thriller featuring disgraced trader Jason Stafford (after 2013's Mortals Bonds), investment banker Virgil Becker wants Stafford to investigate Philip Haley, CEO of a hot biotechnology client, to find out if he traded illegally. Becker worries that a scandal involving his client could be "dangerously expensive" to his firm. Haley protests his innocence, claiming that he's being set up. But if so, by whom, and why? The stakes rise dramatically after the murder of Haley's estranged wife, Selena, and Haley becomes the chief suspect. Sears is at his best explaining financial wrongdoing, and Stafford is a fine and fully rounded protagonist, but most of the supporting characters come across as caricatures, particularly the berprivileged Selena and a couple of billionaire CEOs. Despite its graceful prose, the book feels both overblown and undercooked, though many readers will enjoy the voyeuristic glimpses of the lifestyles of the rich and infamous.