The Legacy (Wheeler Large Print Book Series (Paper))

Rating:
Summary: a great idea well written
Review: The best of the pop books I've read this summer. a clever idea about a conroversy still in the news with an up to date twist for adventure. the plot is believable and the characters are carefully etched. the hero's heroics may be a little far-fetched but not outlandishly so. very enjoyable for light reading.

Rating:
Summary: My first read and favorite
Review: The first novel of Frey's that I picked up, and couldn't put down until I finished it. I found myself drawn through page after page, chapter after chapter, by Frey's excellent style that just sucked me into the book and wouldn't let go. I found the plot interesting and the twists surprising. A great action read.

Rating:
Summary: A new twist from Frey, but same Grisham-esque adventure
Review: The Legacy, by Stephen Frey, starts like all Frey books. A young, hot-shot investment broker, Cole Egan, is having problems with keeping his portfolio up to par. A mysterious message from his ever-elusive (and now dead) father instructs him to a safe-deposit box where he finds a video of the Kennedy assasination, from the other side of Dealey Plaza. Immediately, people want the video. Everyone, from media to mafia, is after Cole, and he must try to protect himself and his girlfriend, while the people he has to trust can't be trusted. Cole, through the help of his father's best friend, finds out about his father's work with a covert government agency, and the government operation to cover up conspiracies concerning the assasination. When he turns against Cole, Cole turns to his father's mistress, an ABC producer, for help. Together, they find another copy of the tape, and run from both legal and illegal pursuers. By the end, like all Frey books, Cole Egan is rich and everybody else gets screwed. The combination of adventure, intrigue, and suspense kept this 15 year old reader up until 4:00 in the morning reading (a total of 5 hours of reading time). While The Legacy is one of Frey's shortest books, and definitely the most unusual one, it is absolutely worth reading, whether you want a nice rainy-day read, or an "I can't fall asleep after coming home at 1:30 AM, so I'll start reading" book. Pick it up today!

Rating:
Summary: Totally Unbelievable
Review: The storyline of this was unbelievable. Every time the central character gets in an impossible jam, he miraculously has anticipated the 'surprise'. How does this stuff get into mainstream print? Yuck.

Rating:
Summary: Don't Get Caught Up In "The Legacy"
Review: This book avoids a one star rating because of the main idea of the story, a second tape of the Kennedy assassination on the other side of his motorcade. Fry could do so much with that story, but instead writes a very bad book. He puts his hero into many corners, and doesn't know how to get him out of them. So, Cole (the hero) always has a gun, knife, or set of keys nearby which appear from nowhere. Another problem is the whole father-son business. Cole's father is dead, then he isn't. His dad as only one copy of the tape, then two. And, whgy would someone who has seen their son less than ten times in their entire life send this tape to him? Why not sell it himself? Oh, his dad is in another agency, caled the DIA. Do yourself a favor, do not get this book!

Rating:
Summary: Very exciting
Review: This book had me captivated! So many twists and turns, you didn't know who to trust! An interesting twist to the JFK assasination.

Rating:
Summary: so good, it should be a movie!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Review: this book is awsome. Stephen Frey's "The Legacy" is so good, this book should be made into a movie directed by Oliver Stone or Stanley Kubrick. this book is full of twist and turns. you simply can't stop reading this book. you can't! trust me. it's pure action from the get go. once your done with one chapter, you've got to continue. next thing you now, in less than one week, you finished all 296 pages!!! it's that good. the book revolves around Cole Egan who is a stock trader at the bank. he's not doing very well money wise and has run into some trouble with the Mafia. he suddenly recieves a phone call that his dad, who he never knew has died and is also given instructions to a lot box to retrieve what was inside. inside is a tape from the assassination of President Kennedy, only that this one does prove conspiracy beyond a reasonable doubt. what ensures from there on is pure drama, suspense, action, and pure instincts. until now, i had no idea who Stephen Frey was. now i know, and i like it. happy hunting

Rating:
Summary: Standard page-turner
Review: This standard page-turner, as previous reviews note, asks readers to accept more and more improbable conspiracies and plot twists.
The ending let-down is the huge blooper at the end when author Frey terms as "financial genius" the father's plan to give the $15 million tape to his son while alive, thus "avoiding inheritance tax." This author, specializing in financial settings, should know that gifts which exceed the lifetime gift/estate tax exclusion of about $650,000 are subject to the same tax as an inheritance. Giving a $15 million item during life has virtually the same estate/gift tax consequence as leaving the item to your heirs after death.
In fact, it would be financial stupidity for the father to give such a valuable item to his son during life; the father would pay a huge gift tax, _and_ the son would pay income tax upon selling the item. If the father left the item upon death, only one tax would be paid due to the "stepped up basis" the son would receive.
Frey manages to reverse the actual tax benefit; hopefully no one reads the book and decides to "save inheritance tax" by making large gifts during life. Best-selling authors should do better research.

Rating:
Summary: this is his best work.
Review: This thriller/mystery is really good. I have read his others and I can really say that this is his best.

Rating:
Summary: The Legacy
Review: This was a book I could not put down. I can't wait to read another one of Frey's books.