The Day Trader
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4.3 • 16 Ratings
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- $4.99
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
Some people risk everything once in their lives.
Day traders do it every time they go to work.
The exhilarating and addictive world of point-and-click stock market trading takes on a lethal new dimension in this riveting thriller from the New York Times bestselling author of The Insider and Trust Fund.
Augustus McKnight wants a better life than the one he’s got: toiling as a sales rep for a paper products company and suspecting his wife, Melanie, of cheating on him. His only solace is managing his tiny stock portfolio. . . hoping to strike it rich. Then a shrewd investment actually earns him a windfall. But it’s too late to save his marriage. In a bitter, violent confrontation, Melanie admits to a secret affair and demands a divorce. One day later, she is found brutally murdered. And Augustus is the sole beneficiary of her million-dollar life insurance policy.
Suddenly, Augustus has the better life he’s always longed for–but at a devastating price. To escape his pain, he plunges into the world of the full-time day trader, surrounded by like-minded loners who risk it all to run with the bulls and bears. Yet even as his financial fortunes begin to soar, dark circumstances threaten to send his life into a tailspin. A suspicious insurance investigator is determined to prove that Augustus committed the murder to get the million. And a relentless police detective is watching Augustus’s every move–with the help of a mystery informant.
Augustus’s only ally has is Vincent Carlucci–an old friend and high-living player, who offers Augustus a sweet gig managing the money of some big shots who’ll pay handsome commissions on winning investments. But when the deal is sealed with a night on the town at an exclusive after-hours club, Augustus stumbles on the first of many shocking revelations about the events that have rocked his world–and discovers he is both a pawn in a complex game of manipulation and betrayal . . . and the target of a twisted quest for revenge.
The Day Trader is as thrilling–and terrifying–as gambling on a hot stock in this lightning-fast world where fortunes are made or lost at the touch of a button, where being rich means being ruthless, and where quick wits and killer instinct make the difference between success and slaughter.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The title and cover may suggest an intriguing look at the financial world's quick-hit specialists, but the latest from the bestselling Frey (Trust Fund; The Insider; etc.) is little more than a clumsily executed murder mystery with day trading merely a backdrop. Augustus McKnight is a man with many troubles: he's broke; his supervisor is blackmailing him; his beautiful wife, Melanie, tells him she wants a divorce. But worse is to come. Melanie is found murdered, her throat slit and her body dumped in an alley near their home in Washington, D.C. Buoyed by a couple of lucky investments as well as Melanie's million-dollar life insurance policy, Augustus launches a new career as a day trader. From this point on, the plot clanks along in implausible fashion. During the day, Augustus spends time with his new group of wacko friends at work (their nicknames include "Freak-Show" and "Slammer"). In the off-hours, he follows the police investigation of Melanie's death and does some sleuthing of his own. When Augustus discovers that Melanie held a secret job as an erotic dancer at a local strip club controlled by the mob, it dawns on him that he may be getting in over his head. As in his other financial thrillers, Frey keeps the action lively by setting up confrontations in almost every scene, then quickly moving on. The dialogue tends to be laughable: "Sometimes I think you care about the Wall Street Journal more than you do about me." Credit Frey, however, with coming up with a zinger of an ending, one that's so preposterous that even the shrewdest of day traders won't see it coming. 5-city author tour.
