From Publishers Weekly
When the behind-your-back world of a Manhattan executive collides with the in-your-face-reality of a battered Brooklyn woman, the result is a taut, nerve-wracking drama. Jack Whitman's rosy future in a Time Warner- type media conglomerate turns into workaholic obsession when his pregnant wife is gunned down by random crossfire. Grief-driven, Jacks zooms along the fast track, becoming a major player in his boss's plan to wrest control of "the Corporation" from the company's chairman by completing a multinational merger without notifying the board. A chance subway encounter with Dolores Salcines--a Dominican mother hiding with her four-year-old daughter, Maria, from her violent husband, Hector--drives his loneliness home. Moved by her plight--and her beauty--he offers Dolores a job and a temporary safe house at a friend's empty loft. But Hector finds them; they narrowly escape and end up in Jack's house in Park Slope. Now tragedy is in store, stalking Jack at work as the internecine war escalates and at home as Hector closes in. Only one incident at this point may dismay readers, who will find it contrived. Otherwise, Harrison ( Break and Enter ) has written a beautifully balanced thriller in which high-tech corporate power struggles are contrasted with the incendiary passion for family shared by Jack, who finally has everything, and Hector, who has lost it all. $100,000 ad/promo.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
This is a hard-boiled detective novel without the detective. Harrison has a feel for the rhythm of New York, just as Dashiell Hammett had for San Francisco. The plot, told from the perspective of corporate businessman Jack Whitman, oozes sex, blood, and greed. At first, the reader feels sorry for Whitman when he is pulled into a corporate coup d'etat and is caught up in a dangerous love affair after the brutal murder of his pregnant wife. Later, however, it becomes apparent that Whitman is a metaphor for the greed of our era with his amoral ability to use money and people interchangeably. He tries to reconstruct his family by taking in a down-and-out woman and her daughter, while using corporate might to hold the estranged father at arm's length. Meanwhile, he is a point-man for an internal takeover in a multinational corporation. One could feel sorry for Whitman when his life collapses, but the forces that destroy him are cut from the same cloth as he is. The beauty of this book is in the characters' depth. An editor at Harper's magazine, Harrison is author of Break and Enter (Crown, 1990). Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 1/93.
- Randall L. Schroeder, Augustana Coll. Lib., Rock Island, Ill.Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
