Grippando’s latest thriller couldn’t be more timely. . . . All the elements you expect from a Grippando novel are here, including interesting characters, a plot filled with nonstop action and suspense, and continual surprises. A splendid read.
Reader Warning Alert: if you plan to read James Grippando’s white-hot thriller Money to Burn, push all your scheduled activities back for a few days. It’s impossible to put down. . . . His best yet. . . . Money to Burn is a real-time, heart-racing gamble.
Grippando is a skilled writer, and he works enough variations on the familiar theme to keep us guessing. . . . Recommend this one to fans of Joseph Finder’s PARANOIA, COMPANY MAN, or POWER PLAY.
A sleek, sophisticated thrill machine. . . . I thoroughly enjoyed this blood-soaked tale of murder and intrigue set among Wall Street’s most powerful and unscrupulous players. Highly recommended.
Grippando is a skilled writer, and he works enough variations on the familiar theme to keep us guessing. . . . Recommend this one to fans of Joseph Finder’s PARANOIA, COMPANY MAN, or POWER PLAY.
Bestseller Grippando’s overwrought financial thriller gives its hero, Michael Cantella, almost as rude an awakening as Kafka’s Gregor Samsa. Scandals involving subprime lending, short selling, and Ponzi schemes provide a timely backdrop. On the eve of his 35th birthday, Cantella goes from being a star performer at a premier Wall Street investment firm to a financially wiped-out victim of identity theft. His Job-like troubles are just beginning as the fallout not only rocks his second marriage and his firm but sets him up for a life on the run. Grippando (Intent to Kill) keeps the reader guessing why Cantella specifically is targeted and how the vicious and relentless personal attacks relate to the unexplained disappearance (and presumed death) of his first wife on their wedding day seven years earlier. Despite a few plot holes, the dramatic tension remains high with a sadistic hired killer, high-stakes wheeler-dealers, and plenty of cinematic escapes. (Mar.)
In Grippando's latest, a Wall Street investment banker is neither bull nor bear-he's a lamb led to slaughter. Young Michael Cantella is a fast tracker at Saxton Silvers, a fast track Wall Street investment-banking firm. The good life is his-all the perks and all the toys that inevitably accrue to those extremely clever about money. But the good life is about to take a hit. Honeymooning in the Bahamas, Michael manages to lose his bride. Did beautiful, bright, endlessly sexy Ivy drink too much, fall off their sailboat, and plunge to her death? All anyone can say for sure is that she vanished. That 13-foot tiger shark snagged by a local fisherman? Well, maybe its stomach contents were tell-tale, maybe not. Flash forward four years. Michael, now 35, and a bit less the dazzling wunderkind, remains a Saxton Silvers mainstay with a new beautiful, bright, endlessly sexy wife, and if on occasion thoughts of Ivy darken contentment, he's learned to cope. Then it happens-the relentless, incomprehensible process by which Michael is converted into a modern-day Job. Begin with the night his computer conveys the jaw-dropping news that a $13 million nest egg has vanished as completely and mysteriously as Ivy did. Soon after, Michael finds himself universally deplored as the viper who did the dirty to his own firm, bringing it to the verge of bankruptcy. Moreover-another frame-up-the cops like him for the murder of Chuck Bell, the obnoxious host of a popular TV money show. Clearly, Michael has enemies, and though he doesn't know why they want him ruined, or who they are, they better not sell him short. Grippando (Intent to Kill, 2009, etc.) serves up another full bore assault on plausibility, but his basewon't be put off by that.
Grippando’s latest thriller couldn’t be more timely. . . . All the elements you expect from a Grippando novel are here, including interesting characters, a plot filled with nonstop action and suspense, and continual surprises. A splendid read.” — Romantic Times
“Reader Warning Alert: if you plan to read James Grippando’s white-hot thriller Money to Burn, push all your scheduled activities back for a few days. It’s impossible to put down. . . . His best yet. . . . Money to Burn is a real-time, heart-racing gamble.” — Madison County Herald
“[A] gripping thriller.” — National Examiner
“Scandals involving subprime lending, short selling, and Ponzi schemes provide a timely backdrop. . . . Grippando keeps the reader guessing. . . . The dramatic tension remains high with a sadistic hired killer, high-stakes wheeler-dealers, and plenty of cinematic escapes.” — Publishers Weekly
“Ranking among his best, Grippando’s latest thriller will not disappoint his loyal readers. . . . The twists and turns are surprising and plentiful . . . and there will be plenty of readers staying up late to finish this in one sitting.” — Library Journal
“Grippando is a skilled writer, and he works enough variations on the familiar theme to keep us guessing. . . . Recommend this one to fans of Joseph Finder’s PARANOIA, COMPANY MAN, or POWER PLAY.” — Booklist
“A sleek, sophisticated thrill machine. . . . I thoroughly enjoyed this blood-soaked tale of murder and intrigue set among Wall Street’s most powerful and unscrupulous players. Highly recommended.” — Christopher Reich, author of RULES OF VENGEANCE and NUMBERED ACCOUNT
“MONEY TO BURN will get you so excited and worked up, you just may go out and steal a few million.” — Brad Meltzer, author of THE BOOK OF FATE and THE TENTH JUSTICE
“MONEY TO BURN is one of those all-too-rare novels you won’t be able to stop reading once you start. It’s a perfectly mixed cocktail of dry wit, sophisticated voice, believable characters, non-stop suspense, and plenty of vicarious pleasure.” — Joseph Finder, author of Vanished and Paranoia
“James Grippando skillfully uses the financial meltdown, along with Ponzi schemes and identity theft, in an exciting and timely thriller. . . . This is a thriller through and through.” — South Florida Sun Sentinel
MONEY TO BURN will get you so excited and worked up, you just may go out and steal a few million.
MONEY TO BURN is one of those all-too-rare novels you won’t be able to stop reading once you start. It’s a perfectly mixed cocktail of dry wit, sophisticated voice, believable characters, non-stop suspense, and plenty of vicarious pleasure.
James Grippando skillfully uses the financial meltdown, along with Ponzi schemes and identity theft, in an exciting and timely thriller. . . . This is a thriller through and through.
South Florida Sun Sentinel
Ranking among his best, Grippando's latest thriller (after Intent To Kill) will not disappoint his loyal readers. Michael Cantella is a successful 35-year-old financier still living with the nightmare disappearance and death of his first wife, Ivy, on their honeymoon seven years earlier. When he logs on to his computer one day to find that his investment accounts have been cleaned out and subsequently finds his personal and professional lives under attack, the past he thought was buried rises once again. Not only is Michael facing the disappearance of his money and suspicion from the FBI that he may have stolen the funds himself, but he also has to consider the possibility that Ivy may still be alive. As with Grippando's best, the twists and turns are surprising and plentiful, while the protagonist is drawn well enough that the reader cares what happens to him. VERDICT Even those who don't regularly read Grippando will appreciate this latest effort, and there will be plenty of readers staying up late to finish this in one sitting. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 11/15/09.]—Craig Shufelt, Fort McMurray P.L., Alberta
