Chameleon
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- $4.99
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
Jon Phillips is head bond trader at one of Wall Street's largest investment banks and lives the American dream in the heart of New York's decadent banking community. But, after years of selfishness and extravagance, he plans his exit through an unprecedented and ultimately fraudulent deal in the US government bond market. A high-ranking colleague, who sits on the bank's main board, has teamed up with a Russian financier in order to provide Jon with one of the key elements vital to the success of his ingenious scheme. The deal goes spectacularly wrong and Jon's world collapses. As the Russians desperately attempt to recover their lost millions, Jon is thrown into a deadly game of cat and mouse. From the seedy nightspots of downtown NYC to the plush yacht clubs of the Hamptons, pastoral aristocratic England, and Southern Australia's endless beaches, past lovers, new menaces, and numerous apparently accidental deaths line his trail. Jon's survival now depends on putting the past behind him and becoming a calculated predator instead of the vulnerable prey.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Cocky Australian financier Jon Phillips, head of proprietary bond trading at the Bank of Manhattan in New York City, has hatched a bold plan to corner the U.S. government bond market by buying $15 billion worth of bonds. He then intends to run up their value by starting a false rumor that a major U.S. company is in legal trouble, whereupon he will sell all for huge profit. To pull off this scheme he uses money from a Russian mobster who's eager to launder his own ill-gotten gains. The fact that what he's doing is illegal doesn't bother Jon, and it's only after, inevitably, he comes a cropper that he realizes he's in serious trouble. The bank fires him, and the Russian is out for revenge, but Jon remains fairly nonplussed until a series of deaths force him to flee Manhattan. Hedge fund partner Hains's strong suit is insider financial info, but the basic plot, characters and writing are all formulaic. There's a continuing, valiant attempt to heat up the action with a variety of lurid sexual encounters, but even this effort can't lift what's run-of-the-mill into out-of-the-ordinary.
