Squeeze Plays

Squeeze Plays takes the reader to an opulent world of penthouses and paneled boardrooms in New York, where the head of a publishing empire who has risen far above his talents is facing a serious financial shortfall – and his banker isn't about to give him a leg up.

The chairman of Star Enterprises, Winston Crumm, is the captain of his own ship, though he is never the one actually piloting it. When he steps in to save his family's newspaper business, he gets his company into bed with a shady Russian oligarch without the knowledge of anyone else on the board.

When the Whitehall Banking Group pulls the loan that Star Enterprises has been living on, Winston Crumm needs to do something to save his pocketbook. The easy road arrives in the form of Maxim Ripovsky, a London-based billionaire who offers $20 million, the exact amount of the Whitehall loan. Ripovsky's terms for this investment are mildly bizarre, but seem perfectly tolerable to the desperate Winston.

Unbeknownst to Winston, Ripovsky is working his own scheme to get on the board of Whitehall by blackmailing their CEO. Meanwhile, Bob Mandell, a Financial Times reporter catches the scent of the mysterious investment that saved Star Enterprises and begins to uncover Ripovsky's many shell corporations and their questionable investments, putting Winston's company once again at risk.

Along the way, the reader encounters sexual and financial blackmail, a break-in intended to quash Mandell's story, and the places and people in the lives of the ultra-privileged. It also uses the author's background as a financial journalist to bring to life the investigative reporter's probe into the loan, the shell companies and the secretive investment.

SQUEEZE PLAYS is a financial espionage novel of 67,000 words. It uses wit and an insider's experience with financial journalism to explore the underhanded agreements and suspect motives of investors and desperate men.