Silent Partner FROM THE PUBLISHER
"Angela Day has survived a rough past - from a hardscrabble 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 stockholder 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 upon 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.
SYNOPSIS
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.
FROM THE CRITICS
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. (Jan.) Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.
Library Journal
Angela is in trouble. First, she is offered a job by an eccentric billionaire whom several people want dead. Then she discovers a means of determining the race of an online mortgage applicant. Only a lawyer like Frey (Trust Fund) knows how dangerous that could be. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
A spunky bank V.P. signs on with a semi-trillionaire to fight the evilest moneymen in Richmond, Virginia. Pretty middle-manager Angela Day has taken everything the world could throw at her since leaving her childhood trailer home. But, oh my, it's a hard go in this latest business-bodice-ripper from Frey (The Legacy, 1998, etc.). First, her African-American high-school chum Sally gets raped and murdered by slobbering fraternity punks; then Angela marries the irresistibly handsome fratboy and heir to a Virginia fortune, who later, bowing to the wishes of his odious but fabulously rich and powerful father, divorces Angela by using perjured testimony and a bought judge, winning custody of their adorable boychild. But hard-working Angela has been noticed by someone outside the big old bank where she just can't make it through the glass ceiling. She's been flown out west in a private jet to meet mysterious, stupendously wealthy software heir Jake Lawrence. Angela hates flying, but she doesn't mind riding in a big warm SUV with Lawrence's hard-handed cowboy gofer John Tucker. Tucker doesn't know why Lawrence needs face time with an obscure bankeress, but Angela soon learns that the cold-eyed billionaire, who owns a growing share of her bank, wants her as a stalking horse for a merger he's got in mind. Declining a pass from Lawrence and surviving an ambush on horseback on the way back to the airport, Angela returns to Richmond to find that her menacing employers are now very interested in her career. Walking a tight line between loyalty to Sumter Bank and obedience to the wishes of shadowy Jake Lawrence, she looks into the software business Lawrence is angling for and stumbles on nefariousdoings all over the place. Could the growing regional bank be practicing redlining? Could the conspiracy theories of her feisty reporter pal Liv be real? And is Jake Lawrence one of the good guys or one of the bad? Turgid megamoneymelodrama.
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