Rating: 
Summary: 5 brilliant and shining stars for "Paranoia"!
Review: Adam Cassidy is a wunderkind, though he hides it well. In reality, he merely gets through his days doing as little as he possibly can and still receive a paycheck. That he's employed by Wyatt Telecom, a "player" amongst corporate giants only seems to bring out the rebellious side of him. And so he seals his fate when he misappropriates funds for the retirement party of a lowly dock worker. He's caught, as he knew he probably would be, though he lackadaisically tries to cover up his trail, and he finds out exactly how bad life can actually get.When his employers opt not to arrest him for corporate fraud, among other things, Adam is relieved, but only temporarily. Instead, they want to plant him as a spy in the upper echelon of their largest competitor, Trion Systems. Not believing in his own talents, Adam at first balks at the idea-but he's left little choice. Do it, or go to prison for the rest of his life. All is not as it seems at Trion. Adam finds that with the insider information he's fed by Wyatt, he's able to move smoothly up the corporate ladder, feeling a bit like James Bond. He makes nearly three times as much money, is given a Porsche and a highly desirable condo in the poshest high-rise in the city, Adam begins to enjoy his double life. That is until he begins to suspect that something isn't right. Those he trusts show signs of being untrustworthy, and soon he feels trapped between two evils: himself, and Wyatt. Publisher's Weekly has billed this as "the first blockbuster of 2004," and Finder very well may live up to that hype. With a tight storyline, incredible dramatic tension, well-developed characters, and more twists than a Chinese knot factory, "Paranoia" has already been added to my top ten all-time favorite reads, and should be on yours, as well! Purchase two copies of this thriller, as you'll want one for home and one to carry with you wherever else you go.
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Summary: A dark comedy of industrial skullduggery
Review: Adam Cassidy, a junior product line manager in the consumer electronics giant Wyatt Telecom, pulls a prank involving the impersonation of a company VP, hacking into Wyatt's proprietary database, and illegally disbursing seventy-eight grand to fund the retirement bash of some unsuspecting (but grateful) shmoe on the loading dock. Cassidy is looking at 55 years of prison time, minimum, unless he plays ball with the company CEO, Nicholas Wyatt, who proposes a scheme to insert Adam as an espionage mole into the heart of Wyatt's biggest competitor, Trion Systems. There's evidence that Trion has initiated a super-secret project, and Cassidy's redemption is to find out what it's all about - or else. To transform Adam into the marketable Whiz Kid that he isn't, he's intensively prepped by Nicholas Wyatt's personal "executive coach" and provided with a totally fictitious but very impressive CV. Launched into Trion for a job interview, he's subsequently hired. Through apparent luck and circumstance (and with info fed to him by his Wyatt handlers), Adam quickly becomes the special assistant to Trion's CEO, Jock Goddard. Cassidy is now in a perfect position to feed Wyatt intel on Trion's secret project, "Aurora". As befitting an espionage thriller, author Joseph Finder divides his book's ninety-three chapters into nine parts based on spy terminology, and which mirror the plot's evolution: The Fix (a person is blackmailed into being an agent), Backstopping (establishing an agent's cover), Plumbing (a covert operation's support assets), Compromise (detection by the opposition), Blown (exposure of an agent or operation), Dead Drop (hiding place for clandestine messages), Control (pressure exerted to prevent an agent's defection), Black Bag (illegal entry to obtain intelligence material), and Active Measures (operations that'll affect another nation's policies or strategies). PARANOIA paints a cynical portrait of corporate business practices and ethics. Indeed, Cassidy is almost an anti-hero since he isn't exactly burdened with moral scruples. He regrets his original stunt only because he got nailed, and his role at Trion because the alternative is so much worse. That is, until he decides that Goddard is the most decent human being he's ever met - the loving father figure he never had. Is Adam developing a conscience? Even at 400+ pages, PARANOIA is one of those books one wishes would never end. The action is taut, the dialogue clever, the plot darkly comedic, and the ending deliciously twisted (though perhaps not unexpected). My only complaint - a minor one - is that the last chapter, and indeed the very last line, is so lacking in closure for the Cassidy character that I looked to see if my copy was short a couple pages. (I intended to query the author, but hadn't saved his email address.) It only works if there's to be a sequel. But, looking at the author's publishing history, sequels don't seem to be his style. I suggest PARANOIA would make an entertaining film starring Ben Affleck as Cassidy, Donald Sutherland as Goddard, and Tim Roth as Wyatt.
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Summary: Finder Pushes the Envelope
Review: This is a great book. However, it should be sold with a warning label. Do not start reading unless your spouse is prepared to be ignored for a few days; your children's self-esteem can weather being told not to interrupt you; there is absolutely nothing pending at work and you can drive with a single eye while reading with the other. Be forewarned. You are not putting this thriller down until you reach page 423. It is not often an author leaves me regretting all of my previous five stars thriller ratings. They should have been reserved for this book. Joseph Finder successfully pushed the edge of the envelope with Paranoia.
Rating: 
Summary: Great stuff!
Review: Joseph Finder, Paranoia (St. Martin's, 2004) Joseph Finder (High Crimes, recently made into a movie)'s fifth novel is something different. Something new. From the looks of things, Finder wanted to take aspects of literature-and I'm not talking your basic modern 20th century "literary" novel here, I'm talking lit-rat-chaw-and apply it to the technothriller. Certainly as risky as anything his protagonist, Adam Cassidy, comes up with during the novel. And how does he succeed? Very well, thank you, for the most part. Finder does for the technothriller what Hammett did for the mystery novel, though he's still something of a neophyte in places. Paranoia is a shining example of the idea that literate subtlety will always beat straight genre writing, no matter what the genre. Adam Cassidy is your basic punk. He spends his free time drinking and doing drugs, and his work hours trying to find ways to do as little as possible. He feels more comfortable hanging out with the loading dock crew than he does in his cubicle at Wyatt Industries, being a low-level marketing goon. Because of that, when the loading dock foreman gets ready to retire, Cassidy decides to screw his company and give the guy the best possible send-off, so he pulls a couple of the appropriate numbers and gets the affair catered. Problem is, he's not quite aware of the scope of the catering, and when the bill hits the desk, Cassidy's head is about to roll. Nick Wyatt, the almost cartoonishly evil chairman of the company, gives Cassidy a choice-either go to jail for embezzlement or go to work for their main competitor, Trion Systems, and get the dirt on a top-secret Trion project. Needless to say, Cassidy chooses the latter, or we wouldn't have a novel. Paranoia grabs you from the beginning and refuses to let go. As with any competent thriller, techno or otherwise, the plot and the pacing are strong, but that's not where the true strength of Finder's book lies. He uses subtle tricks to give insight into the characters, couches his moral lessons in dialogue (they do scrape close to the surface at times, but nothing hits you in the face with a dead haddock), and generally turns the whole thing into the kind of technothriller that Frederick Exley or Barry Hannah might have written, had they the inclination. I was struck at first with the idea that the book's use of profanity was gratuitous, but once I figured out what Finder was doing, I took a second look and realized he was working with the precision of a jeweler. Every time you think the prose seems a little off kilter, profane or not, take another look. There's more under the surface than there seems to be. What this results in is characters drawn more strongly here than in almost any modern fiction; if Stephen King is the undisputed master of drawing characters in a few lines, Finder has quickly become the main understudy. So why am I not hailing this the most brilliant novel to come down the pike since Kathe Koja last released something? Because I'm still not sure about the ending. I got to the bottom of page 423, turned it over, fully expecting there to be a few more sentences, and... blank space. I practically growled at the book. (I simultaneously can't wait to see and dread what Hollywood is going to do to the end of this when it gets filmed. And for the record, no one but Brian Dennehy can possibly play Nick Wyatt.) Given everything I've said above, I get the feeling I missed something along the way in that last chapter, but there's a part of me that thinks Finder tried the classic ambiguous ending, another literary risk, and it just didn't go as smoothly as the other highbrow tricks that make this novel so incredible. As it stands, the novel doesn't have loose ends, it's got an Oriental rug that comes unraveled all at once. Expect to spend a good deal of time mulling over the ending. You probably won't get anywhere, but you'll do it anyway. As with all good thrillers, Finder packs a whole lot of twists, turns, red herrings, blue herrings, mysterious gurus, father figures, and a whole plethora of wonderful minor characters (Antwoine deserves his own book, to be sure) into these pages. Don't let the ending stop you. Read this. ****
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Summary: Captures the moods of high-tech corporate America.
Review: The high-tech corporate workplace is now more diverse and competitive than ever, and this is due not only to globalization and outsourcing but to the effects of automation. In addition, memories of the "employees market" of the 1990's and its demise as the new century began are still very much intact. The wild frontier of the nineties employment situation allowed many, if unsatisfied in their current position, to move "out West" to another one in a matter of days. The covered wagons of the 1880's though are replaced by the Accord's, Infiniti's, and BMW's of the 1990's. The sense of independence and confidence felt during this time was probably unequaled in the economic history of the United States. This all changed of course in the collapse of the tech sector, and with jobs getting more scarce all the time, and layoffs increasing dramatically, companies reminded employees, sometimes very untactfully, that they should be "thankful to have a job", and that the raises will be "significantly less" than in preceeding years. Such morale-busting, blunt rhetoric would have never been possible in the roaring 1990's. In addition, for the last fifteen years, due mostly to legal pressures, corporate America has been obliged to integrate (no pun here) "diversity" into the workplace. Fearing lawsuits, and losing some in a few instances, has caused some human resources departments to take measures that would seem drastic if compared with the preceeding decades. Indeed, some have deployed employees, called "change agents" , whose function is to monitor behavior and language that some might find offensive. All of this results in a jittery, timid, and paranoid workforce, composed of individuals frightened of losing their jobs, offending their minority co-workers, or afraid of not being able to justify, from a cost-effective point of view, their place in the organization. It is within this context that this novel definitely qualifies as being literary realism, for the author has captured very accurately the moods of the post-1990's workplace, from the employee cubicle all the way to the CEO's office. The dialog and introspection of Adam Cassidy, the main character, is very familiar. For example, Adam refers to the non-politically correct E-mail message, that, even if done with innocent intention, will, if discovered, result in maybe a week of intense "diversity training". Such diversity training of course is mandatory now in most of corporate America, Email message or not. The story is also quite blunt in its portrayal of industrial spying in the high-tech corporate environment. Although it is very difficult to prove how much is done, industrial espionage has been a fact of life in corporate America for many decades, as one character in the book enjoys pointing out with boastful clarity. Industrial espionage is of course illegal, and should be, and so alternatives must be found that will allow companies to obtain useful intelligence on their competitors. One of these is called "competitive intelligence", a phrase which appears in the book, but not elaborated on in any great detail, and is a software tool whose function is to search for knowledge about a competitor's activities, including their manager and employee interests and movements. It works with varying degrees of success, due to the huge quantity of (public) information which it must deal with, and to the mis-information that is frequently and deliberately put out by firms to mislead their competitors. Jock Goddard, the CEO of Trion, is the most interesting of the characters in the story. He comes across as a Will Rogers incarnate in the beginning of the story, only to offer surprises as the story develops. Nicholas Wyatt, the CEO of Wyatt Telecom, the "one scary dude", is a CEO as many people imagine them to be: arrogant, boastful, and intimidating. But most heads of companies are much more tactful than Wyatt, and are masters of tact and prudence. Nora Sommers is the only misplaced character in the book. The author should have had her in human resources, as her attitude and overbearing behavior are characteristic of some who populate the glass-enclosed offices of HR. All of the characters reflect the semantic discreteness of the author's approach, as they do their jobs in the story with minimal changes of their attitudes and beliefs. This allows the story to move very rapidly, which it does, and the reader stays on edge throughout much of the book. Adam is the young, typical employee that you meet in high-tech organizations. Intelligent, but not brilliant, and dissatisifed with his job, he nevertheless has a measure of daring about him, as evidenced in his use of company funds to throw a party for a friend. Intimidated by authority, he is easily pressured into becoming a mole in the Trion organization, a situation which he is clearly uncomforable with, and one in which he eventually, because of a small measure of moral courage, attempts to break free from. His life kicks in to overdrive, and a fast car, a fancy apartment, and a beautiful woman to indulge him regularly in the appropriate horizontal configuration result in lack of restful sleep being a constant of nature for him. Adam Cassidy though does manage to get through his tribulations and the extreme paranoia resulting from his association with Wyatt Telecom. However, he then meets his greatest challenge when his "girlfriend" Alana implores him to "just get in the car". He should not get in that car.
Rating:
Summary: Suspenseful Fun!
Review: This fast-paced romp pits down-and-out Adam Cassidy against two multi-national high-tech corporations. When Adam embezzles thousands of dollars from his employer to throw a stylish retirement party for a loading dock employee, he finds himself at the mercy of his boss, Nicholas Wyatt. He is faced with a choice: either go to prison or assist in corporate espionage. Adam chooses the espionage, and lands a job at rival Trion. What Adam doesn't count on is shifting loyalties and increasing stakes. Although Adam's predicament tests his resolve, he always has the spunk and wit to get out of one jam and into another. Despite the title, this novel is not a dark thriller; instead, it is a wry, often outright funny story that owes more to Max Barry's satiric Syrup than to Jeffrey Deaver's The Blue Nowhere. With Finder's fast-paced, breezy style, Adam does not have the time to be paranoid - he's too busy scrambling to find his way free of the plot twists. The supporting characters have just the right amount of idiosyncrasies to make them memorable. The only disappointment is the ambiguous ending; the thriller genre demands more definite resolution than Finder provides. I highly recommend this book for readers who want something both suspenseful and light-hearted.
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Summary: Read what PUBLISHERS WEEKLY has to say
Review: As a regular reader of fiction and book critic and a subscriber to the major industry journal, PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, I'm amazed that the Publishers Weekly review of "Paranoia" doesn't appear above, among the Editorial Reviews. For all of you potential readers who don't subscribe to PW, here's what they said: "This novel is the real deal: a thriller that actually will keep readers up way past their bedtimes. . . . Relentless suspense . . . A first-rate surprise ending packs a wallop . . . The most entertaining thriller of 2004." Publishers Weekly gave "Paranoia" a starred review, which it gives to very few novels; it designated it its "book of the week." And it's not just Publishers Weekly that's been raving about "Paranoia." Here's what the other major prepublication review, LIBRARY JOURNAL, had to say about "Paranoia": "Finder's latest is a fun read with a hip narrator, an engaging story set in a world rarely seen in thrillers, and great suspense. Highly recommended." Library Journal gave "Paranoia" a starred review as well.
So why is the only review posted above a snarky one from "Booklist," surely the most minor pre-pub review journal, by a critic who does not review thrillers and gives raves only to books on such arcane subjects as "Queer Theory"? Baffling to me. But you all should know that Amazon's choice of reviews doesn't reflect the critical consensus on "Paranoia." Just about everyone who's read it loves it.
Oh, and what about my opinion? I think it's the best thriller I've read in years. It's incredibly suspenseful, really well written, smarter than any other book in the genre I've ever read, funny, thoughtful, and hugely entertaining. Take my word for it: you'll love this book too.
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Summary: Nothing is what it seems in this corporate thriller.
Review: What a thrill this book is. When I received a copy to read, I quickly downed it in one long day of travel, often reading while waiting in lines at airports. The book simply grabs your attention and won't let go. I lent it to a friend who was just as smitten. The pacing is excellent and the suspense and action will have you quickly turning pages. Our lead character is a slacker and is going nowhere fast until a "too good to be true offer" comes his way. But there is a catch. He quickly learns that all is not what it seems and he is not quite sure who he is working for, and where is loyalties lie. He becomes a pawn in a game of corporate competition and has to make ethical choices that seem to grow by the minute. The ending will surprise you. The book is also timely considering the ethical climate of Corporate America these days and more insight than ever at some of what is going on behind the closed doors of the visible brands we know. What the book does very well (I will not spoil the plot by explaining it all in detail like some reviews here have done) is get into the psychology and emotions of the lead character as one choice after another guides him down a path he is not sure he wants to be on. This is perhaps the best aspect of the book, other than the pacing of the story. You will come to your own conclusions at the end as to what choice you would make in that situation. If you are considering buying this book, ignore the critical "editorial" reviews. Are there some issues with the way corporate mechanics are depicted, or are there some shallow characters, and even a few plot holes? Sure. However, this book is a thriller you won't want to put down, and an experience you will want to enjoy again, and that is the point. Highly recommended, and worthy of its hype.
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Summary: Best book I've read in a LONG time...
Review: Joseph Finder has taken the ordinary-guy-in-extraordinary-circumstances thriller to a new level. Adam Cassidy is a worker drone, but manages to use his computer skills to one-up his company by throwing an executive style $78,000 party for a retiring dock worker, and sticking them with the bill - or so he thinks. But he gets caught and much to his surprise, being fired isn't an option. He is offered a choice - certain jail time, or the chance to infiltrate a competing company and pass along their secrets. Under intensive tutelage, Adam manages to work his way into a position as assistant to the competing CEO, thus avoiding the prison stint. But his new boss treats him like a son, and he finds himself with a deep moral dilemma - should he pull out, and even scarier, can he? The tension mounts almost unbearably as Adam is caught in the middle, making Paranoia impossible to put down. The technical stuff is handled masterfully - it's obvious Finder knows what he's talking about, but he isn't the least bit condescending, and the writing is clear and concise and gives the reader enough information to make the story work without getting bogged down in details, which is a really tough ratio to find. Perfect pacing, and even more impressively, a perfect ending, should put Finder at the forefront of the thriller genre.
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Summary: Spy vs. spy in corporate America.
Review: The protagonist of Joseph Finder's new thriller, Paranoia, is twenty-six year old Adam Cassidy, who is a cog in the machine of Wyatt Telecom. Partly to relieve his boredom, Adam pulls an expensive prank that could land him some serious jail time. To escape a stint in the federal penitentiary, Adam agrees to become a spy for CEO Nick Wyatt, who orders Adam to steal corporate secrets from Wyatt's rival in the telecommunications business, Trion. Adam gets a job in Trion and, little by little, he obtains sensitive information that will allow Wyatt to gain a competitive edge over Trion. There are only two problems. What will happen to Adam if he gets caught, and how can he live with himself while he is betraying his employers and colleagues at Trion? To add to Adam's woes, his father is dying of emphysema, and none of the caregivers whom Adam has hired is willing to put with the cantankerous and abusive old man. Paranoia is a first-rate novel about a young man with looks, personality, brains, a sense of humor, and ambition. Adam has the potential to be a major player in the corporate world. However, is he clever enough to evade the sharks that are circling in the water? Will Adam sell his soul to become a part of this culture? Is driving around in a Porsche, wearing expensive suits, and living in a fancy apartment worth the price of Adam's integrity? Paranoia is a savagely funny indictment of a dog-eat-dog culture that rewards manipulation, selfishness, and greed. The plot is intricate, thoroughly engrossing, and immensely entertaining. Finder writes wittily about the men and women who walk the walk and talk the talk in corporate America, but who lack compassion and a sense of fair play. I recommend this highly involving page-turner for its fascinating characters, its sharp writing, and its cunning twists and turns.
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