Blown
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- £9.99
Publisher Description
A darkly funny satire of corporate greed, sexual desire, and crime from "the slightly more well-adjusted offspring of Hunter S. Thompson and James Ellroy" (Los Angeles Times).
The boy genius of the foreign exchange desk, Bryan LeBlanc is surrounded by acolytes of the free market, the true believers, the U.S. Marines of capitalism—"the few, the proud, the completely full of themselves." He soon realizes that being honest at a dishonest job is not the path to success. Deciding to give Wall Street a taste of its own medicine, Bryan hatches an intricate plan to disappear permanently with just enough misappropriated money—and sailing classes—to spend his golden years cruising the Caribbean.
Bryan quickly learns that being a criminal, even a really smart one, is more complicated than he thought. He finds himself on the run in the Cayman Islands, wanted for murder. On his trail is an irresponsible team of investigators sent by his Wall Street firm, hellbent on reclaiming the millions before their clients notice it's missing. Their efforts are complicated by an Australian sailor begrudgingly circumnavigating the globe to fundraise for breast cancer awareness.
In Blown, "Smith works out the mechanics of his heist beautifully . . . [It's a] madcap crime caper, one with a little temper and a dirty mind" (Kirkus Reviews).
"Blown is his best yet: funny and frisky, with unforgettable characters and a surprising, twisty plot that will keep you up way past your bedtime."—Edan Lepucki, New York Times-bestselling author of Woman No. 17
"A gripping, hilarious, wild ride of a book. I loved it."—Lisa Lutz, New York Times-bestselling author of The Swallows
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
An embezzlement scheme goes horribly off the rails in this darkly amusing tale of white-collar crime and its inexpert perpetrators. Bryan LeBlanc is a foreign exchange trader on Wall Street who, disillusioned with his career prospects and his colleagues' sense of entitlement, decides to skim $17 million from his accounts and set off for a permanent vacation. Bryan is no sooner bound for the Cayman Islands than the financial irregularities are spotted by his boss, setting in motion a pursuit by the firm's security agent Neal Nathanson and managing director Seo-Yun Kim (both of whom are grappling with personal emotional crises not unlike Bryan's), a private detective, and a crooked bank manager, not all of whom are committed to the return of Bryan's haul. Smith (Raw: A Love Story) relates details of Bryan's financial legerdemain with the authority of an insider and masterfully laces the novel's serious scenes with veins of humor, as when Bryan recounts the exhausting number of currencies he has laundered his ill-gotten gains through and thinks, "Who knew being a criminal was so stressful?" He has a fine-tuned ear for witty repartee and a skill for embroiling even his most comically conceived characters in dramas that steer his plot through unpredictable twists and into unforeseeable outcomes. This is a surprising, memorable novel.
