Description:
Penzler Pick, April 2001: Michael Ledwidge follows his exciting debut, The Narrowback, with another edge-of-the-seat thriller. Sean Macklin is a telephone repairman in New York City. While dealing with a problem on a line, Sean inadvertently plugs into a conversation that he should not be hearing--but he does. Sean's wife is disabled and they desperately need money, and the conversation is about a merger about to take place. Sean knows that inside information like this can pay off big, so he invests, making a handsome profit. But Sean can't leave well enough alone. He knows that he risks his job tapping into the line of a CEO in a large investment bank, but he also knows that if he does this just a few times, he will have enough money to move his wife to Florida. But then he hears something he really shouldn't. The CEO, in a conversation with an overseas associate, suggests something that Sean knows is more than illegal--it's immoral. Outraged, he contacts his brother Ray, who is a cop, and lets him listen to a tape of the conversation. Sean would like to see the CEO busted and out of a job, but Ray has other ideas for the tape and he's not about to share those ideas with Sean. He asks an old street friend, Scully, to help him out, and between them they place in jeopardy everybody they know. By the time this story is finished we have been treated to a fable about greed that is about as dark as it can get. --Otto Penzler
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