Crash

February 3, 2020
This financial thriller from bestseller Hagberg (the Kirk McGarvey series) and financial journalist Light, a sometimes uneasy mix of Wall Street business and hard core action, presents a frightening doomsday scenario. Cassy Levin works in cybersecurity at the Manhattan headquarters of Burnham Pike, the nation’s premier investment bank, and has discovered a computer worm that she believes will destroy BP’s system and then spread to trading floors worldwide. Meanwhile, top executives at BP, who introduced the worm, and Spencer Nast, the American president’s White House chief adviser on economic affairs, are plotting to crash the world economy, starting with the New York Stock Exchange, in order to enrich themselves. Cassy, who can’t get anyone at BP to listen to her, confides in her fiancé, former Navy SEAL Ben Whalen, shortly before the bad guys kidnap her. Ben’s efforts to rescue Cassy ratchet up the suspense. Readers should be prepared for some mini-economics lessons, including an afterword on the “debt bomb” by Light. The novel’s awkward structure undercuts its sobering message. Agent: Susan Gleason, Susan Gleason Literary.

March 15, 2020
The folks who gave you the Great Recession, when people prospering one day were eating cat food the next, are still beavering away, according to this oddly structured thriller. "Oddly structured" because the heroes are introduced in the opening pages?cybersecurity pro Cassy Levin, whose integrity has been a career drawback, and her lover, former Navy SEAL Ben Whalen. Then they all but disappear as the authors take us inside the fictional Burnham Pike, "the nation's premier investment bank," and make us endure yards of tedious disquisitions on the financial markets. It's clear that Burnham execs have come up with a global scam to short sell stock, deflate its value, then clean up on the ruins. Cassy catches on, and her attempts to thwart the scheme?followed by their attempts to kill her?turn the last half of the novel into a grade-A thriller. Hagberg has had spooky success as a prophet, writing about the felling of the Twin Towers and the killing of Osama bin Laden before they happened. If you own stocks, hunker down.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)