Long Way Down

December 15, 2014
In Sears’s uneven third thriller featuring disgraced trader Jason Stafford (after 2013’s Mortals Bonds), investment banker Virgil Becker wants Stafford to investigate Philip Haley, CEO of a hot biotechnology client, to find out if he traded illegally. Becker worries that a scandal involving his client could be “dangerously expensive” to his firm. Haley protests his innocence, claiming that he’s being set up. But if so, by whom, and why? The stakes rise dramatically after the murder of Haley’s estranged wife, Selena, and Haley becomes the chief suspect. Sears is at his best explaining financial wrongdoing, and Stafford is a fine and fully rounded protagonist, but most of the supporting characters come across as caricatures, particularly the überprivileged Selena and a couple of billionaire CEOs. Despite its graceful prose, the book feels both overblown and undercooked, though many readers will enjoy the voyeuristic glimpses of the lifestyles of the rich and infamous. Agent: Judith Weber, Sobol Weber Associates.

December 15, 2014
Sears' (Black Fridays, 2012, etc.) sophisticated sleuth Jason Stafford returns in this odd hybrid of a high-finance mystery and a high-stakes chase thriller. Stafford begins this adventure in a frazzled state, recovering from a two-year jail spell and the violent death of his ex-wife; he's also coping with raising an autistic son, known only as the Kid. He thinks he has a simple case on his hands when millionaire engineer Philip Haley enlists his help. Haley is on the verge of a green-energy breakthrough but is about to be indicted for insider trading and claims he's being set up. Suspects include the Chinese government and his estranged wife, Selena, until the latter is murdered on the way home from a meeting with Haley. Stafford enlists an expert hacker to investigate Haley's financial trail but winds up receiving a note with just one word: "Run." He then begins an elaborate flight up and down the East Coast that does little to get him out of trouble and even less to advance the plot. The book ends with a tense showdown in which Selena's murderer, whose identity shouldn't be hard to figure out, overpowers Stafford but somehow neglects to kill him, then takes a motorboat into the East River intending to dump his body. During the ensuing confrontation Stafford demonstrates physical strength that seems quite impressive, even for a hero who works out at the gym. The flight and fight sequences are exciting if far-fetched; it reads as though Sears wrote these first and then built a story around them. The chase action is enough to make this an agreeable read, and the Kid scenes add depth, though the book never delivers on the promise of well-turned financial intrigue.

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Starred review from December 1, 2014
Readers familiar with Sears' Jason Stafford novels know about this ex-con and former Wall Streeterhis murdered wife, his autistic son, and his new career as a financial investigator. Newcomers who feel stranded at the first chapter are advised to hang on. As soon as Stafford tears into his new assignment, a buzz starts that won't let go. He's asked to assist a biofuels wizard accused of fiddling the stock of his own company, and immediately he's stumbling through this brand-new world of iterative crackers. Sears cleverly gets the reader on Jason's side by having him lost, toosomebody's always reminding him that he's not looking at pictures but digital images. The sequence of lies and betrayals that constitute the plot are revealed in action scenes and confrontational dialogue with wry undercurrents, sort of Ian Fleming by way of Woody Allen. The novel's final face-off has the villain musing on sin, as if Fleming's villain Ernst Blofeld was a commentator on NPR. But the tension and suspense are genuine and gripping, as is the view of a world where billionaires, like drug cartels, have hit squads.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)