DECEIT AND DIRTY MONEY

Rating:
Summary: A real page-turner.
Review: A real page turner. James Bond meets Wall Street meets Treasure of Sierra Madre. This thriller is a perfect winter vacation download for those suffering post-Florida recount withdrawal and in need of some fast-paced intrigue in exotic settings. Fully imagined scenes of summer-in-the-city Wall Street noise and greed switching to foggy San Francisco Montgomery Street with interludes in sleepy, hot, dry and dusty Mexican countryside. At first glance, all seems pre-NAFTA idyllic, but look more carefully. Is that a car overturned in the roadside ditch with its wheels still turning? Proof that "formal education and sterling resume" clothed in Armani go before the fall. Or do they?

Rating:
Summary: How does he know all this stuff?
Review: If Caesar felt betrayed by his knife wielding assassin Brutus, then Chris Callen the protagonist should be ready for the worst ! Betrayed by his boss and mentor who has lured him to San Francisco to take "the job of a lifetime" Callen sinks deeper and deeper. The story unfolds with edgy, nail-biting encounters in San Francisco from the salons of Pacific Heights to dives South of Market. As the vortex of violence and intrigue swirls, he manages to pull himself free at the eleventh hour just as his nemesis' plan spirals out of control.

A real page turner for your next cross country flight !

Rating:
Summary: How does he know all this stuff?
Review: The question above is a rhetorical question I heard a friend ask after he read this book. The friend is a retired DEA agent, and he notes that a lot of the material in "Deceit and Dirty Money" was strikingly similar to cases that the DEA had dealt with, and they linked the highest levels of society to the rankest levels of organized crime. Another acquaintance of mine who is president of a chamber of commerce in northern Mexico once complained how legitimate businesses were being coopted under duress by drug traffickers and used to launder money, echoing one of the themes of this book.

Since my DEA friend and I know the author to be an upstanding local citizen, we are sure he has no complicity in such things but has used his observations and experience to create a very credible "what if" scenario. The author has noticed how easy it is for a seemingly legitimate money management account to be co-opted by organized crime, thereby creating a major dilemma for its managers, ultimately even mayhem.

"Deceit and Dirty Money" does bear some of the hallmarks of a thriller. It has less than full development of some of the characters (although the depiction of SF high society is right on -- I especially liked the detail about the socialite walking over to the Chanel section of her cavernous closet) and it does pick up a rather frenetic pace toward the end, but the central thesis is sound, and quite chilling. Far from implausable, in light of recent events, the situation could have been even worse: what if the asset management firm found out that, unknowingly and for a long time, they had been managing money for Al-Qaeda? The good people in the firm would report this to the authorities and lose their company, their livelihoods, and probably face imprisonment. But what would the less scrupulous people do? Chilling.

Rating:
Summary: Kept me engaged
Review: Vivid descriptions of San Francisco and Mexico rang true for this reader. The author paced the plot quite well and that kept me wanting to read on. As the story twists, some of the characters develop in directions you didn't expect from the outset while others act more predictably. It's a well-crafted first novel and I'm waiting for the next one !