Blown

April 23, 2018
An embezzlement scheme goes horribly off the rails in this darkly amusing tale of white-collar crime and its inexpert perpetrators. Bryan LeBlanc is a foreign exchange trader on Wall Street who, disillusioned with his career prospects and his colleagues’ sense of entitlement, decides to skim $17 million from his accounts and set off for a permanent vacation. Bryan is no sooner bound for the Cayman Islands than the financial irregularities are spotted by his boss, setting in motion a pursuit by the firm’s security agent Neal Nathanson and managing director Seo-Yun Kim (both of whom are grappling with personal emotional crises not unlike Bryan’s), a private detective, and a crooked bank manager, not all of whom are committed to the return of Bryan’s haul. Smith (Raw: A Love Story) relates details of Bryan’s financial legerdemain with the authority of an insider and masterfully laces the novel’s serious scenes with veins of humor, as when Bryan recounts the exhausting number of currencies he has laundered his ill-gotten gains through and thinks, “Who knew being a criminal was so stressful?” He has a fine-tuned ear for witty repartee and a skill for embroiling even his most comically conceived characters in dramas that steer his plot through unpredictable twists and into unforeseeable outcomes. This is a surprising, memorable novel. Agent: Mary Evans, Mary Evans Inc.

April 1, 2018
When a Wall Street trader rips off $17 million of his brokerage's cash, it initiates an island-hopping chase across the Caribbean.Smith's (Raw, 2013, etc.) novels are an acquired taste but often leave readers wanting more. Here, he delivers a comic crime novel inspired by the criminal character of Wall Street and its modern-day robber barons. A prologue finds a main character stranded on the high seas, imprisoned by a stranger. Next, meet our "bad guy." Bryan LeBlanc is a trader on his company's foreign exchange desk, and the former boy genius is embittered--not a Fight Club burn-the-world-down anarchist but more of a disaffected sort who's convinced himself his theft is sticking it to the man. "Call it dropping out or early retirement, but somebody had to show that those [Wall Street] values were corrupt; exploiting people didn't lead to happiness," Smith writes. "He could make a stand for a better world, inflict some hurt on a big bank--all that and get a tan." His theft is the catalyst for a rapid, funny, and often lewd pursuit across the West Indies by a quirky cast. Those on the chase include Bryan's boss, Seo-Yun Kim, a Korean-American savant with an eccentric personality and a blossoming sexual appetite; Neal Nathanson, the bank's lovelorn internal investigator; and eventually Piet Room, the book's most interesting character, a dwarf ex-cop with the swagger and charm of Tyrion Lannister. Smith works out the mechanics of his heist beautifully, including the inconvenience of hauling around millions in cash and the inevitability that someone dangerous is going to catch up to you eventually, while still throwing in the occasional graphic jolt to make sure you're paying attention. Smith isn't always the best at sticking the landing (hello, deus ex machina), but readers will have enough fun here to push the boundaries of plausibility a little.Another madcap crime caper, one with a little temper and a dirty mind.

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