Click Here To Purchase The Gods of Greenwich

Author: Norb Vonnegut
Publisher: Minotaur Books
ISBN: 978-0312384692

Prosopagnosis  (from the Greek ‘prosopon’ meaning ‘face’ and ‘agnosia’ meaning ‘inability to know’) is the inability to recognize faces and this unusual physical disorder plays a significant role in Norb Vonnegut’s latest fast-paced and riveting thriller novel.  It’s a surprising twist in a fascinating plot filled with shady financial moguls, a sinister security guard, a ruthless female contract killer whose subjects are the elderly, the primary character Jimmy Cusack and his wife whose prosopagnosis is so severe that it leads to an inability to recognize her stalker.  And that’s just for starters!
 
The story revolves around bluecollar neighbourhood-raised thirty-four year old Cusack.  A tough kid, he thrived in the financial world until his hedge fund collapsed.  With the bank about to foreclose on his multimillion dollar condo and his extensive financial responsibilities (to extended family members as well as his immediate family including his pregnant wife, Emi), he takes a job with the Leeser Capital company and enters the world of Cy Leeser where deception, corruption, evil and power-seeking are rampant.
 
When Henry Kissinger wrote that “power is the ultimate aphrodisiac,” he could have been describing Leeser - a driven man with no moral compass who is reminiscent of the likes of Bernie Madoff.  While working for Leeser, (who thrives on having the best in everything, regardless of the cost be that financial, emotional or relational), Cusack encounters cutthroat bankers in Iceland, a sheikh in Qatar, an assassin who will stop at nothing to eradicate his wife.  A continual search for Leeser’s “secret sauce” (the hedge-fund investment plan that mysteriously makes money no matter what the stock market is doing) brings Cusack face to face with danger and an explosive confrontation with Leeser.
 
The novel is fast-paced, the author’s style is engaging and informative without being jargonesque, and the characters are compelling.  There’s Ólafur, a managing director at Hafnarbanki, Reykjavik, Iceland's oldest bank; the mysterious Daryle Lamonica who appears and disappears at the strangest of times; Cusack's trader friend ‘the Geek’ who has ties to powerful people in Qatar; the assassin Rachel Whittier and her mysterious employer; and Cy Leeser’s trophy wife, Bianca a bestselling author who wields her own kind of power over her egotistical husband.
 
The book is a tale of good and evil, the rich and superficially-rich, of international spies and of a plot that comes to its climax at a zoo of all places!  Sadly, the book’s final chapter ties up loose ends in a manner fitting a grade seven writer and is a big disappointment.  Let the reader surmise what happens to Cusack and Leeser, two gods of Greenwich.  Keep the suspense going … and end the book with Bianca, writing her Memoir.

Click Here To Purchase The Gods of Greenwich