Clawback: A Silas Cade Thriller

by Mike Cooper

Overview

Someone is killing off Wall Street's shadiest financiers, and only Silas Cade can get to the bottom of it

With breakneck pacing, nonstop action, and cutting-edge details of today’s financial intelligence technology, Clawback offers a thrill-a-minute narrative set in the world of Too Big to Fail. Silas Cade, a black-ops vet and gray-zone contractor, is no stranger to gunslinging or shady finance. After coming home from America’s wars abroad, he becomes an “accountant”—the go-to for Wall Street financiers who need jobs done quickly, quietly, and by any means necessary. Hired by a major player to visit a tanking hedge fund manager and extract ten million dollars in clawback—the mandatory return of compensation paid on a deal that goes bad—Silas instead discovers that someone is killing off bankers all over New York.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780143122739
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	06/25/2013
Series:	Silas Cade Series
Pages:	400
Sales rank:	1,144,521
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 7.90(h) x 1.00(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Mike Cooper is the pen name for a former financial executive. Winner of a Shamus Award for his short fiction, he was also nominated for an International Writers Award for a previous novel, published under another name. He lives in Boston.

What People are Saying About This

Andrew Gross

"Clawback is smart and savvy, and paced like a bull market rally! Silas Cade is part Jack Reacher, part Seal Team Six in the Madoffian canyons of power and greed."

Craig Johnson

“Better than a bank with wheels, Clawback reads like a rollercoaster on a financial graph! Mike Cooper’s debut novel has a narrative that’s breezy and light, kind of like the fire that backdrafts under a door before it blows off the hinges.”

Josh Bazell

 "Sharp, invigorating and remarkably assured, Mike Cooper's financial thriller Clawback has done the unthinkable: it's made Oliver Stone's Wall Street look downright naïve.” 

Thomas Perry

“Clawback is a great guilty pleasure.  It has vivid but convincing action, a sympathetic protagonist with a specialty we haven't seen before, and plentiful antagonists we all have reason to despise. Buy it.”

Brad Thor

"Mike Cooper’s Clawback is fantastic. If Tom Wolfe could channel Robert Ludlum, he would have written this novel. Think Bonfire of the Vanities meets The Bourne Identity and then kick it way, way up. Action, suspense, and tons of insider information. This is my kind of thriller and I can't wait for the next one. If you like Nelson DeMille, you will love Mike Cooper."

Editorial Reviews

This reads like a made-for-TV movie with a pleasing mix of action, sleuthing, clever tricks, a slow-developing romance, and far-out chase scenes. A great start for what one hopes is a series character, this will appeal to anyone who likes a fast-moving thriller leavened by wit.” — Library Journal

"Cooper, 'a former financial executive,' vividly renders a gossip-fueled world where self-important one-percenters begin to carry guns to protect themselves from murderous “peasants,” anarchists, and jihadists. Clawback has intriguing characters, knowing insights into the Wall Street demimonde, a blistering pace, lots of action, and some over-the-top derring-do that may attract Hollywood." — Booklist (starred review)

“By mid-tale, Cade’s gone hand-to-hand more than once, dodged a shoot-out and arm-wrestled a helicopter before jumping into the Hudson River to save himself. Cooper’s characters will probably populate sequels… There’s much snappy, half-cynical repartee reminiscent of 1930s Hollywood cinema, including snarks about the necessity of gun control, and a firefight aboard a mega-yacht followed by a jet ski-Zodiac water pursuit. Cooper sets the action in New York City, a locale he has down pat, from neighborhood diners to the only place it’s legal to live on your boat. Arm a Hollywood hero with a Beretta and disposable cell, point him at a Gordon Gekko–type, and this book’s big screen ready.” — Kirkus

"Engaging ... Cooper clearly knows the investment world.” — Publishers Weekly

"Mike Cooper’s Clawback is fantastic. If Tom Wolfe could channel Robert Ludlum, he would have written this novel. Think Bonfire of the Vanities meets The Bourne Identity and then kick it way, way up. Action, suspense, and tons of insider information. This is my kind of thriller and I can't wait for the next one. If you like Nelson DeMille, you will love Mike Cooper." — Brad Thor, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Full Black

“Clawback is a great guilty pleasure.  It has vivid but convincing action, a sympathetic protagonist with a specialty we haven't seen before, and plentiful antagonists we all have reason to despise. Buy it.” — Thomas Perry, Edgar Award-winning and bestselling author of The Butcher’s Boy

 "Sharp, invigorating and remarkably assured, Mike Cooper's financial thriller Clawback has done the unthinkable: it's made Oliver Stone's Wall Street look downright naïve.”  — Josh Bazell, author of the New York Times bestselling Beat the Reaper

“Better than a bank with wheels, Clawback reads like a rollercoaster on a financial graph! Mike Cooper’s debut novel has a narrative that’s breezy and light, kind of like the fire that backdrafts under a door before it blows off the hinges.” — Craig Johnson, bestselling author of Hell is Empty

"Clawback is smart and savvy, and paced like a bull market rally! Silas Cade is part Jack Reacher, part Seal Team Six in the Madoffian canyons of power and greed." — Andrew Gross, bestselling author of Reckless

"Intriguing...Clawback is definitely worth the investment."
— Associated Press

"Required reading"
— New York Post

From the Publisher

"Clawback is smart and savvy, and paced like a bull market rally! Silas Cade is part Jack Reacher, part Seal Team Six in the Madoffian canyons of power and greed."

Andrew Gross

 "Sharp, invigorating and remarkably assured, Mike Cooper's financial thriller Clawback has done the unthinkable: it's made Oliver Stone's Wall Street look downright naïve.” 

Josh Bazell

"Mike Cooper’s Clawback is fantastic. If Tom Wolfe could channel Robert Ludlum, he would have written this novel. Think Bonfire of the Vanities meets The Bourne Identity and then kick it way, way up. Action, suspense, and tons of insider information. This is my kind of thriller and I can't wait for the next one. If you like Nelson DeMille, you will love Mike Cooper."

Brad Thor

"Cooper, 'a former financial executive,' vividly renders a gossip-fueled world where self-important one-percenters begin to carry guns to protect themselves from murderous “peasants,” anarchists, and jihadists. Clawback has intriguing characters, knowing insights into the Wall Street demimonde, a blistering pace, lots of action, and some over-the-top derring-do that may attract Hollywood."

Booklist (starred review)

Better than a bank with wheels, Clawback reads like a rollercoaster on a financial graph! Mike Cooper’s debut novel has a narrative that’s breezy and light, kind of like the fire that backdrafts under a door before it blows off the hinges.

Craig Johnson

"Cooper, 'a former financial executive,' vividly renders a gossip-fueled world where self-important one-percenters begin to carry guns to protect themselves from murderous “peasants,” anarchists, and jihadists. Clawback has intriguing characters, knowing insights into the Wall Street demimonde, a blistering pace, lots of action, and some over-the-top derring-do that may attract Hollywood."

Booklist

Clawback is a great guilty pleasure.  It has vivid but convincing action, a sympathetic protagonist with a specialty we haven't seen before, and plentiful antagonists we all have reason to despise. Buy it.

Thomas Perry

Silas Cade can field strip a Browning .50-caliber machine gun, and he can parachute from an airplane, but he's done with Iraq and military life and has no interest in hired-gun Blackwater. Instead, Cade reconnoiters Wall Street and uses covert tactics to recover missing millions. In Cooper's debut thriller, ex-special ops Cade has earned his CPA, decided not to bean-count and decided to apply his skill set to become a one-man lost-funds recovery operation. The story begins with a hiccup in Cade's business. Client Thomas Marlett is killed by a sniper, a murder happening at the same time Cade "claws back" Marlett's $10 million from an about-to-be-arrested fraud. In the Wall Street milieu where traders "have long ago left behind law, morality and the social compact," Cade doesn't lack clients. His next, Quint Ganderson, investment-fund managing partner, informs Cade that Marlett's fund was down 78 percent and two other CEOs of poorly performing funds are also recently dead. As Cade searches for the assassin, Clara Dawson inserts herself into his investigation. She's a financial blogger-journalist whose legwork has uncovered the fact Cade's no boring bookkeeper. By mid-tale, Cade's gone hand-to-hand more than once, dodged a shoot-out and arm-wrestled a helicopter before jumping into the Hudson River to save himself. Cooper's characters will probably populate sequels, not only Cade and Clara, but also Johnny, boyhood friend and high-velocity trader; Zeke, a hard-drinking, laconic former special-ops buddy; and Rondo, Clara's roommate and a gay martial arts expert. There's much snappy, half-cynical repartee reminiscent of 1930s Hollywood cinema, including snarks about the necessity of gun control, and a firefight aboard a mega-yacht followed by a jet ski-Zodiac water pursuit. Cooper sets the action in New York City, a locale he has down pat, from neighborhood diners to the only place it's legal to live on your boat. Arm a Hollywood hero with a Beretta and disposable cell, point him at a Gordon Gekko–type, and this book's big screen ready.

Kirkus Reviews