Author: Joseph Finder

ISBN: 13-978-0-312-34748-2

           10: 0-312-34748-0

The premise of New York Times best selling author Joseph Finder’s Power Play focuses on the kidnap-for-ransom of a major corporation’s entire top leadership by a gang of thugs that takes place in a lodge in a remote area of British Columbia.

Our story unfolds when our primary protagonist, Jake Landry, a junior executive with Hammond Aerospace Corporation and someone who is not exactly embraced by the managerial inner circle was asked at the last minute to join twelve of the company’s top executives at its annual leadership retreat.

The reason why Landry was chosen to join the group was due to an unfortunate crash at the Paris Air Show involving Hammond’s competitor, Eurospatiale. This would no doubt mean that many of their competitor’s customers may now be reluctant to have further dealings with Eurospatiale.  Consequently, Hammond’s CEO Cheryl Tobin had requested Landry join the group as a substitute for the chief engineer who recently underwent a triple bypass and was unable to travel. Landry knows a great deal about the company’s 880 aircraft and Tobin wanted to have someone who could talk knowledgeably about it with her.

However, when Landry meets Tobin for the first time on the company’s private jet he is taken aback to learn that there seems to be some illegal conduct going on within the company. Tobin informs him that she has hired a law firm to conduct an internal corporate investigation into Hammond Aerospace.

Landry is reminded as to what happened when Boeing was involved in a huge scandal with the Pentagon acquisitions office and now there were rumors that something similar was going on at Hammond. Tobin asks Landry to spy on her behalf and report back to her concerning the activities of certain executives-something Landry finds quite distasteful, as he does not like the idea of acting as her stool pigeon. He is further mystified when he meets his former girlfriend Alison Hillman onboard the aircraft who turns out to he the special assistant to Tobin.

When the executives settle in at their luxuriant retreat they are invaded by a group of armed thugs pretending to be hunters who barge in while they are sitting around enjoying a succulent meal. The executives are told to empty their pockets and are subsequently tied up. The leader of the gang threatens to kill them if a transfer of one hundred million dollars is not made to his secret offshore bank account. The transfer supposedly will take place via the internet on a computer that is stashed away in the lodge.

The plot’s harrowing journey proceeds through a series of bloodcurdling twists and turns, however, what effectively brings it together is the interplay of Landry’s scores of experiences as a youth witnessing his mother being cruelly battered by his drunken father as well as the time he spent in a juvenile delinquent center. The knowledge gained from these unpleasant events provides him with indispensable tools that ultimately prove to be of immeasurable significance in getting out of the dangerous predicament that he and his fellow executives find themselves in. Woven together, the story crisscrosses back and forth through time where Landry is able to tap into his hidden talents and as we discover he turns out to be the only true hero in the pack.

Finder in his Acknowledgements that appears at the back of the book states that he has tried to get the details as accurate as possible and there is no doubt that his writing does in fact have a clever accuracy in its tone and execution. It is undoubtedly a delight to read a first-rate suspense novel where scenes flow with a film-like quality and you just can’t put the book down until the last page!

 The above review of the Advanced Review Copy (ARC) was contributed by: NORM GOLDMAN:  Retired Title Attorney: Editor & Publisher of Bookpleasures. Here are  Norm Goldman's Reviews       

 To read an interview Norm conducted with Joe Finder CLICK HERE

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