The Vulture Fund
Sephen W. Frey
Synopsis
A powerful new novel by the author of the New York Times business bestseller The Takeover. Alerted to irregularities in the buying patterns of a risky new inventment fund, Wall Street investment banker Mace McLain uses all his cunning and razor-shapr instincts to uncover a string of bizarre connections that hint at a huge conspiracy--a plot with roots in Washington politics and international terrorism.A CIA director with presidential ambitions, but not the cash, hires Arabs to launch a campaign of terror to precipitate economic chaos in the U.S. This will enable him to buy property at a cheap price, later selling it at a profit. The main protagonist is the banker raising money for the purchases.
Expert Commentary
This Book was reviewed by: Emily Melton - BookList, Publisher's Weekly, Library Journal, Kirkus, The Publisher and Member Reviews
From Emily Melton - BookList:
Following the success of his debut novel, "The Takeover" (1995), Frey follows up with a second book that's every bit as good. No one would guess that self-assured Mace McLain, a thirtysomething Wall Street whiz kid, is the product of a Minnesota orphanage. When his boss at prestigious Walker Pryce virtually guarantees him a partnership if Mace successfully shoulders a risky new billion-dollar venture, Mace can hardly say no. But what he doesn't know is that behind the scheme lies a plot involving blackmail, terrorism, murder, the U.S. government, and the CIA. He catches on fast, though, and still has the energy to investigate the bizarre plot despite his killer workload and time out for a torrid affair with his boss on the project, a beautiful woman named Leeny Hunt. Mace soon learns it's not safe to trust anyone--his boss, his friends, his lover, even the highest levels of government. The action gets hotter and hotter and finishes with a stunning conclusion. Comparisons of Frey to Grisham and Clancy are apt--he's got the same ability to mesmerize his reader with fast-moving action, gripping intrigue, and larger-than-life characters. A winner!From Publisher's Weekly:
More than one reviewer of his first novel (The Takeover) dubbed investment banker Frey the Grisham of financial thrillers. The comparison holds for Frey's second: the characters clatter like wooden puppets, and the prose wobbles between the serviceable and the silly, but the man can tell one exciting story nonetheless. Hotshot New York investment banker Mace McLain is recruited by his senior partner, Lewis Webster, to establish a $2 billion "vulture fund" that will buy great chunks of Manhattan properties in what Webster insists will be an inevitable real estate bust. Mace's immediate boss in the venture will be Kathleen (Leeny) Hunt, smart, beautiful and predatory. Meanwhile, the country's vice president, a Democrat, is locked in a fierce struggle with the CIA director, who's the presumptive GOP presidential nominee. Frey lets on that one of the two has suborned Webster and Leeny into working a scheme (involving professional terrorists and murder) that will shatter the New York real estate market and generate vast campaign funds. Most readers will easily figure out who Mr. Big is, but the fun hereand there's plenty of itisn't in solving a mystery. It's in seeing a smart and tough minnow like Mace tossed into a shark tank and only to swim his way out, gills puffing and tail flashing. 150,000 first printing; major ad/promo; film rights optioned by Paramount and Neufeld/Rehme; author tour. (Aug.)From Library Journal:
Frey's best-selling debut novel, The Takeover, was "a Grishamesque blend of skullduggery and intrigue" (LJ 6/15/95). Here, an investment banker uncovers a conspiracy between Washington politicos and terrorists.From Kirkus:
Wall Street and Washington baddies plot--ploddingly--against the public interest in another lurid shocker from investment banker Frey (The Takeover, 1995). Lewis Webster, senior partner at the venerable securities firm Walker Pryce, puts up-and-coming deal-maker Mace McLain in charge of a new $2 billion fund established to make a killing in the market crash he ostensibly believes is imminent. Although mildly disturbed by his superior's timing and analysis of the economy, ambitious Mace accepts the assignment. At the same time, he's detailed to recruit Rachel Sommers, a whip-smart MBA candidate at Columbia, where alumnus Mace is an instructor. Unbeknownst to the yuppie financier, his venal boss is part of a byzantine scheme engineered by CIA Director Malcolm Becker--a potential candidate for the Republican presidential nomination who needs big money to replace the cash he's misappropriated in aid of his White House aspirations. With evidence of Webster's hitherto unsuspected insider-trading crimes on file, the spymaster has no trouble blackmailing the elder Wall Street statesman into launching the so- called vulture fund. Leaving nothing to chance, Becker has enlisted a gang of Arab terrorists to wreak havoc throughout the US, precipitating a market collapse. Meanwhile, Mace (who's falling for Rachel) learns from the comely grad student that the sources of his fund's capital are not what he was led to believe. His original suspicious confirmed, Mace hits the road and in a West Virginia backwater unearths evidence of the Becker/Webster intrigue. Concurrently, a band of heavily armed intruders seizes control of the nuclear plant that supplies New York City's electricity. Before he can deliver the nation from the evil conspirators, however, Mace must save his own hide and reclaim Rachel from the Becker minions who've abducted her. A lone upright bull takes on lowlife bears and power-mad politicos in a paranoid fantasy almost totally devoid of pace or suspense.From The Publisher:
Mace McLain is the hottest young gun at Wall Street's last great independent investment banking firm. His high-profile career takes a surprising turn when he's named co-manager of a multibillion-dollar "vulture fund," preying on undervalued real estate and stocks in a faltering economy, then selling them at exorbitant gains once the economy recovers. The awesomely powerful senior partner who has made this offer seems willing to bet the bank on it. So does Kathleen Hunt, a gorgeous, seductive, and very shrewd investment banker with high-level contacts, who has come from the West Coast to work with McLain - and perhaps on him. What do they know that he doesn't?barnesandnoble.com Member Reviews
Great Book
Reads like a John Grisham Novel. You don't know what is going to happen next. Keeps you on your toes, —chianne
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