Top Producer

well written financial thriller

The murder of wealthy hedge fund operator Charlie Kelemen has sent shock waves up and down Wall St. Especially stunned is his thirty two years old best friend Grove O'Rourke, who manages two billion dollar in accounts at Sachs, Kidder and Carnegie Investment Bank. Grove saw the homicide along with a few hundred people.

Feeling survivor guilt and wanting to pay homage to his best friend, Grove learns that Charlie's widow Sam apparently is broke, which makes no sense since Keleman was worth a fortune. He tries to help her while avoiding the financial death by association that frequently takes down Top Producers like him. However, his efforts begin to look futile as his peers and superiors at the bank go after him with ferocity as do the outside competitors. Still Charlie refuses to walk away from the fight for survival at Sachs, Kidder and Carnegie or from learning what happened to O'Rourke's money.

This is a well written financial thriller that digs deep into some of the voodoo fund flow of Wall St that seems relevant with all that has happened over the past few years. Overall the story line is fast-paced although the plot can slow down with the profundity of fund management as non practitioners will have to be totally focused. Still the tale is fun mostly because Grove is a likable hero swimming in toxic waters. TOP PRODUCER is an enjoyable insider thriller.

Harriet Klausner

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

Highly recommended - should be required reading

Ever wonder what really goes on in the pit at the stock exchange? Ever wonder what goes on behind the closed doors of the offices of the ones who aren't in the pit and really run things moneywise? Ever wonder how the country got to where we are tonday? Read this book. Is it really fiction? If anything it should be read as part of a required education for all Americans, so maybe when this downturn happens again we may know what to look for and stay out of the mess.

Very interesting

I enjoyed this story. I do feel that the book is better appreciated by those who dapple in the stock market.

Great Read

Awesome summertime read, fast-paced....don't start it unless you have time to finish! I couldn't put it down and was up way past my bedtime, well worth the loss of sleep! Can't wait to see what he comes up with next!

Good story

If you like Wall Street thrillers, this is a god story, and timely too. I am in business so, I enjoyed it more so

Predictable Storyline and Plot

This book has a gripping opening and hook, but it gets lost in its own complexity mid-way through. The author really goes to some length to add extraneous detail to every scene. It's almost obnoxious.

I didn't mind reading the book because the subject matter - hedge funds, Wall Street, corruption - seems so compelling. Whether the author is a Vonnegut or not, the book could have been written within 250 pp.

There's more exposition about stock regulation than page-turning action. The suspense gets solidly redundant as the book tries to build up the plot. Investor #1 wants her money back, investor #2 wants her money back, etc.

I might have enjoyed the book more had there been more character development. The story essentially revolves around the main character without much attention to anyone else. The book could have used a little more action as well to make it a 4 star book.

Reading the book, I almost got the sense that author Norb Vonnegut wanted to create a character he could live through vicariously. This made the character and the storyline one-dimensional and predictable

Top Producer's Stock Soars!

Top Producer is a mystery/thriller set against the high streets of finance and the back alleys of corruption. That itself should be enough to scare you!

If considering a "hedge fund" in the past, this reader's thought patterns would go towards money put away for purposes of purchasing and installing new landscaping. Understandably, I never quite followed how people made such a killing (no pun intended) on hedge funds. Yet I found the explanations of "Wall St. speak" in this book easy to follow, even for a financial feather brain such as myself. In fact I think I even learned a thing or two about the investment business while completely caught up in the story of Grover O'Rourke.

In a world where even goldfish are sharks, Grover (a financial adviser at Sachs, Kidder and Carnegie) and his team are the angel fish of the aquarium. Who would think that a financial adviser had a heart, much less a sense of morality? (My first adviser churned my account while I lived overseas, my last one is currently facing 12 - 25 years on SEC charges.)

Proving the old adage that "no good deed goes unpunished", the renegade hero wades in over his head to help the widow of a friend murdered in a freakishly public display - and the waters are not safe for swimming. Nonetheless, Grover O'Rourke battles the current - managing by willpower, luck and considerable effort to keep his head above water.

The humor, vivid imagery and story line made for reading into the wee hours of the morning. I rooted for the unlikely hero and his small, undervalued school of accomplices. I feared the sharks circling the tank. I never saw what was coming, the red herrings were too tasty.

I'll be looking forward to more works from Norb Vonnegut.

Good Producer

Norb Vonnegut has given us a financial thriller, except for most of us we have to gloss over the financial part. I don't understand that Wall Street jargon, but the good thing is that you don't have to. What we have here is a good story about a scam, with lots of timely allusions to more recent and famous scams. You'll like the main characters- at least the good ones- and the pacing of the story will keep you into it until you finish. Then you will probably thank your lucky stars that you don't have enough money to get scammed bigtime- unless you do of course, in which case you had best not read the book!

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