Silent Partner
A Novel
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- £4.99
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- £4.99
Publisher Description
In the world of high finance, it’s all about risk and return. With big risks come big rewards . . . and even bigger dangers. And no one knows this better than Stephen Frey. From the New York Times bestselling author of Trust Fund and The Day Trader comes an electrifying new thriller of money, mayhem, and murder.
Angela Day has survived a rough past–from a hard-scrabble childhood scarred by the tragic deaths of her father and best friend, to losing custody of her only child to her adulterous ex-husband and his powerful family. But despite it all, at thirty-one, she’s carved out a good career with Sumter Bank one of Richmond, Virginia’s most venerable institutions. And now, summoned under mysterious circumstances to meet one of the world’s richest entrepreneurs, it looks as if Angela may be on the threshold of a brighter future.
“If you help me, I’ll help you.” This is Jake Lawrence’s offer to Angela. A stock-holder in Sumter Bank, the reclusive multibillionaire is planning a takeover of a hot, new company–and he wants Angela to apply her considerable skills and charms to make sure it all goes smoothly . . . and secretly. In exchange, Lawrence promises to use his formidable influence to permanently reunite Angela with her son.
For Angela, it’s the one reward for which she would risk everything. And accepting Jake Lawrence’s deal will mean doing just that, as his mind-boggling wealth and power come with the ultimate price tag: enemies everywhere have marked him for death. And anyone close to him is fair game.
Now, as Angela prepares to broker the deal of her career, she’s stalked by foes on every front. Then, after stumbling on evidence of an insidious conspiracy within her own company, she becomes a target for termination. Armed with the most volatile kind of inside information, Angela has the power to bring the dirtiest players down from the highest places. But they have the power to strike first–at the one thing most precious to Angela.
Silent Partner reaffirms Stephen Frey’s reputation as a master of page-turning suspense in the world of big-money movers and shakers–where everyone has a price, and there’s more than one way to make a killing.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Veteran financial thriller writer Frey (Trust Fund; Day Trader; etc.) returns with another novel of greed and intrigue set in the back corridors of finance. Angela Day, an up-from-the-trailer-park young executive on the fast track at Sumter Bank in Richmond, Va., is summoned to a Tetons hideaway, lair of the reclusive and powerful moneyman Jake Lawrence. Lawrence wants Day to help him take over Sumter Bank and oust Day's boss, chairman Bob Dudley. There is no love lost between Day and the despicable racist Dudley, who schemes to keep blacks out of white neighborhoods by denying them loans; helping Lawrence would mean lots of money and a golden career for Day. But it also puts her life in danger, and she finds herself carelessly used as a pawn by both men. Toss in a muckraking black reporter friend of Day's, whose presence stirs her guilt over the horrific death of a black schoolmate at a college frat party, and a cowboyish bodyguard (complete with ten-gallon hat and pocket flask), and you have the makings of a television movie. Frey is best describing the internecine workings of financial institutions and those who manipulate them, but it's hard to spin an exciting yarn out of mortgage applications, especially when a stereotyped cast of hopeful black homeowners is pitted against nasty Southern good ol' boys. Frey's unremarkable prose ("How could humans be so awful? Why couldn't they just get along?") doesn't help.