Silent Partner

November 11, 2002
Veteran financial thriller writer Frey (Trust Fund; Day Trader; etc.) returns with another novel of greed and intrigue set in the back corridors of finance. Angela Day, an up-from-the-trailer-park young executive on the fast track at Sumter Bank in Richmond, Va., is summoned to a Tetons hideaway, lair of the reclusive and powerful moneyman Jake Lawrence. Lawrence wants Day to help him take over Sumter Bank and oust Day's boss, chairman Bob Dudley. There is no love lost between Day and the despicable racist Dudley, who schemes to keep blacks out of white neighborhoods by denying them loans; helping Lawrence would mean lots of money and a golden career for Day. But it also puts her life in danger, and she finds herself carelessly used as a pawn by both men. Toss in a muckraking black reporter friend of Day's, whose presence stirs her guilt over the horrific death of a black schoolmate at a college frat party, and a cowboyish bodyguard (complete with ten-gallon hat and pocket flask), and you have the makings of a television movie. Frey is best describing the internecine workings of financial institutions and those who manipulate them, but it's hard to spin an exciting yarn out of mortgage applications, especially when a stereotyped cast of hopeful black homeowners is pitted against nasty Southern good ol' boys. Frey's unremarkable prose ("How could humans be so awful? Why couldn't they just get along?") doesn't help.

September 1, 2002
Angela is in trouble. First, she is offered a job by an eccentric billionaire whom several people want dead. Then she discovers a means of determining the race of an online mortgage applicant. Only a lawyer like Frey (Trust Fund) knows how dangerous that could be.

Copyright 2002 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

November 15, 2002
Financial-thriller guru Frey returns with his latest novel-a-year entry. Angela Day, a junior VP at a bank, is surprised when she's asked by eccentric, reclusive billionaire Jake Lawrence to handle the due diligence on a small company he wants to acquire. Why her? she wonders aloud to him, only to be met with evasive and unsatisfactory answers. Her bosses are none too pleased that she's working independently; in fact, they fear she is being used as a pawn so that Jake, a shareholder with a growing interest, might acquire their beloved bank. Angela had no idea she was putting herself in danger by dealing with Jake, a man who is the target of many powerful people's ire. Her only relief amidst her bosses' paranoia (unfounded) and Jake's (well-founded) is John Tucker, Jake's lackey, who seems to be the only person Angela can trust. Or can she? Is the growing bond between them lulling her into too comfortable a position? Frey's departure from the true financial thriller into this more psychological one is a welcome change, and not quite as clumsily executed as his last departure, the very popular " Trust Fund" (2000). The well-formulated surprise ending rounds out what's sure to be another hit.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2002, American Library Association.)