Power Play [Hardcover]

 

 

Create your own review

As many people say, best-selling author Joseph Finder does for CEOs what John Grisham does for attorneys--makes them exciting, entertaining, and larger than life!

Finder's famous for focusing on various industries in his popular novels; in POWER PLAY it's the aviation industry. The action in this novel takes place at an elite hunting lodge off the coast of British Columbia. When the management team of California's Hammond Aerospace meets there, an unlikely character--a junior executive named Jake Landry--is asked to fill in for his boss.

Jake may not be as sophisticated, wealthy, and privileged as the higher-ranking businessmen, but he's clever and proves much smarter where it really matters. His "smart-mouth attitude" doesn't help endear him to the others or alleviate the tension developing between the "egotistical" men and the new female CEO, Cheryl Tobin, who has been hired to "clean up" the company.

Toss in some armed hunters who take over the compound--pretending to be thieves but whom Jake suspects have much more devious ambitions--and you have an action-packed drama with more twists and turns than an Indy race track.

And why are the thieves armed with military weapons? What is their real goal? Will the businessmen help Jake overcome them or are they too cowardly? Is the CEO who was in line for Cheryl's job behind it all? Well, you'll just have to wait and see. I promise you a thrilling, white-knuckle read from start to finish.

Finder keeps us guessing about Jake's background, hinting at some juvenile offense, and he's excellent at characterization. All his characters have unique identities and come alive for me. He weaves an irresistible premise with enough high tech jargon in the plot to keep it believable.

This is my fourth book by this author and I couldn't put it down. Finder once said that the best piece of writing advice he ever received was: start the story at the last possible moment--in the middle of the action. Perhaps that's why he's so good at "hooking" his readers on the first page.

I recommend tossing this book into your Amazon cart; it's well worth the money. I thank his promotional team for sending me an ARC of this fantastic novel.

Jake Landry is a junior executive with Hammond Aerospace, a firm that is not quite in the same league as Boeing and Lockheed. But their main competitor on the second tier has just had a plane crash at a air show and Hammond is trying to take advantage of the situation. That means Jake's boss is on the other side of the globe trying to swing deals and that Jake gets to go to a corporate retreat at a swanky hunting lodge in the middle of the Canadian nowhere. That means no cell phones, no BlackBerrys, but every other luxury when it comes to the food and booze that is available at the lodge.

At first Jake thinks his biggest problem is spending the week with Hammond's top executives, who are happy to ignore him as an underling even when he is the only one in the room who knows what they are talking about. Then he is stunned to see that Ali Hillman, his ex-girl friend, is along on the trip (the fact Jake does not like change seems to be at the root of their relationship problems), but wait, there is more. Ali is now the assistant to Hammond's CEO, who basically wants Jake to spy on the other executives because of suspicions that one of them has been engaging in bribery or worse. But all of these concerns become secondary with a bunch of guys with guns show up, take Hammond's executives hostage, and start demanding a lot of money.

Like "Killer Instinct," Finder begins near the end, teasing his readers with the pivotal moment in which the hero is trying to avoid having to kill someone. The fact that Jake Landry is standing unarmed while some guy has a matte black SIG-Sauer nine millimeter pointed at him does not take away from the certainty that Jake has no choice. He has to kill this guy and apparently he is going to be able to do it. One of the things I like about Finder's heroes, at least in the two books of his that I have read to date, is that they are smart guys who know what they know, know what they do not know, do not take crap from people either above or below them on the totem pole, and have an innate sense of justice. As the story goes along you find out why Landry is the man that he is and why he is capable of doing what he has to do in this book. A consistent device in "Power Play" is that what somebody says as the final line of a chapter resonates in Landry's past and allows Finder to reveal another piece of the puzzle. I especially like the way that Landry does not back down from his betters. That is easy to do since these jerks only think they are Landry's betters, but there is some danger in antagonizing them. The key thing is not that Landry does not care, but that he cares about the right things.

IThis is a fun book to read because Finder keeps things moving and the chapters are really short. My master plan was to read "Power Play" the weekend before it came out, but then on Friday I learned I was teaching a class I had not taught before and had 10 days to put it together. This book was perfect for taking mini-breaks from my work. Going to make lunch? Read a couple of chapters. What to think about something else for a couple of minutes? Read a chapter. The problem is that most of these chapters end with a good reason not to put the book down, and if you are fortunate enough not to have any major distractions then you can sit down and read "Power Play" in one sitting. This is the sort of book that is perfect for those living the computer lifestyle.

The Advance Reader's Edition contained a promotional sampler of "Power Play," read by Dennis Boutsikaris. The CD contains less than 7 minutes of narration, covering the "Before" and first chapter of the book, which is really not enough to make a final judgment. But the tone of the opening does not really match what is happening, a difficult task to accomplish when the story begins at the start of the climax. Boutsikaris does a much better job with the first chapter. However, I would not think "Power Play" is the sort of book you would want to hear read to you when it is such a fun read in the first place.

Joseph Finder has frequently been compared with John Grisham because of his skill in portraying the business world as expertly as Grisham depicts the legal profession. But Finder's new novel, Power Play, also brings to mind the works of Tom Clancy. Instead of a prophetic account of a vengeful Japanese pilot crashing a jumbo jet into the Capitol, we are afforded a preview of the kidnapping for a huge ransom of a large multinational corporation's top executives meeting at a remote retreat through an intricate plot featuring Grisham-like twists. The successful struggles of the company's new female chief executive officer to defend her prerogatives seem like a reverse riff upon recent real-life events at the Hewlett-Packard Company. Permeating this focused, superbly researched, and tragicomic narrative in which unforeseen consequences inevitably occur are flashes of the irreverence, self-deprecation, and wry humor that we have learned to expect from Finder's chief characters, along with a carefully wrought happy ending.

Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review

› See all 6 customer reviews on Amazon.ca

 

2.0 out of 5 stars Standard Fare
The best part of this book are a couple of plot feints early on (which I wish the author had pursued). But soon it becomes a standard "one man against all odds" story. Read more

Published 12 months ago by Jeffrey Swystun

5.0 out of 5 stars A great escape
Sometimes you want a good rollicking read that lets you get lost in the story -- good guys a little too good to be true, bad guys a little too bad. Read more

Published on Oct 27 2007 by Linda Bulger

5.0 out of 5 stars CHILLING, THRILLING STAY-UP-ALL-NIGHT READING
Thriller meister Joseph Finder packs a wallop with his latest action charged novel Power Play. Fans of Finder (Company Man, Killer Instinct, Paranoia) know that he raises the bar... Read more

Published on Aug 21 2007 by Gail Cooke

Search Customer Reviews
Only search this product's reviews

› See all 6 customer reviews on Amazon.ca

Search Listmania!