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A terrorist bombing in Asia . . . A dead FBI agent in Marseilles . . . Bank accounts linked to a genius finance professor in Boston . . .
Can investigator Graham Gage make the connection before his world collapses?
Days after failing to arrive for a secret meeting with the Federal Reserve chairman, FBI agent Michael Hennessy's body is found at the base of a cliff. But was it suicide or murder? A call from the chairman sends Gage hunting for the truth.
As a desperately ill U.S. president prepares to hand over power to his vice president—a man in the thrall of religious extremists—Gage follows a trail of deceit and terror to a conspiracy that threatens to plummet the world into chaos. But for Gage, there is even more at stake. His wife is trapped between an uprising in Central China and the ruthless Chinese government. And unless Gage exposes the greatest treachery of our age before the clock counts down, Faith will die.
Terrorists don't need bombs to blow up a financial system, private investigator Graham Gage learns the hard way in the not-quite-so-successful follow-up toFinal Target(2010).
In the nation's financial world, the clouds are darkening, according to Federal Reserve Chairman Milton Abrams. It's a gut feeling, growing on him that the United States has become vulnerable to inimical forces sophisticated enough about money to use it like a weapon of mass destruction. Nothing definite, still unsettling things have been happening, thinks Abrams. A brilliant economist, Hani Ibrahim, has disappeared after falling from grace. An ex-FBI agent, Michael Hennessy, who also fell from grace, sort of, has been reported as a suicide. No one but Abrams frets much about the Ibrahim-Hennessy connection, but that doesn't stop the newly appointed Fed Chairman from worrying. Yes, he's aware that Hennessy had been reproaching himself bitterly for besmirching Ibrahim's reputation—plausible, perhaps, as a suicide motive—but he knows, too, that there are those in various corridors of power who'd be pleased if both men were vaporized, one way or another. Some of those corridors are in far-flung places, of course, as far-flung as China, for instance. That being the case, the question robbing Abrams of sleep is when does a suicide only resemble a suicide? Or, is the odor he's been sniffing recently the acrid smell of financial conspiracy? Enter Gage, San Francisco PI, summoned by Abrams to find out what Hennessy knew that might have made him inconvenient enough to murder. Tough, resourceful and bulldog stubborn, Gage goes to work, certain that in focusing on Hennessy he's also following the money.
Ponzi schemes and the like are so dutifully explained by Gore that they undercut narrative drive and dampen excitement. Too bad, because there are good things in this novel.
Fed Reserve Chair Milton Abrams asks San Francisco private investigator Graham Gage to investigate the death of a former FBI agent Michael Hennessy in France just before they were to meet even though it appears to be a suicide. His inquiry leads Gage to deported MIT Economics Professor Hani Ibrahim, who was kicked out of the country after Hennessey proved he was leading a money laundering scheme to fund foreign terrorists.
In rural China, an earthquake causes mass destruction and leads to anger and rioting from fuming workers upset with the government response. Their insurgency places the mission of Gage's wife Faith to rescue two Chinese friends from government forces in peril. Gage finds evidence that Ibrahim, using a too big to fail hedge fund, is plotting a terrorist assault on the fragile world economy. However, his work endangers his spouse from Ibrahim's subordinates. Meanwhile, evangelical President Cooper Wallace believes the global economic recession is part of God's master plan so he has doubts if he should intervene in alleviating the crisis.
The second gage tale (see Final Target) is a fabulous somewhat over the top financial thriller. Fast-paced, Steven Gore provides the reader with incredible insight into the too big to fail funding yet with plenty of macroeconomics, the action never slows down. Readers will want to join Gage as he hops from California to Marseille to China following the money trail.
Harriet Klausner
Anonymous
Posted August 16, 2011
No text was provided for this review.
Anonymous
Posted May 28, 2011
No text was provided for this review.
Anonymous
Posted April 19, 2011
No text was provided for this review.
Overview
Days after failing to arrive for a secret meeting with the Federal Reserve chairman, FBI agent Michael Hennessy's body is found at the base of a cliff. But was it suicide or murder? A call from ...