Eat What You Kill

January 27, 2014
Stephen Frey fans will welcome Scofield’s debut, a financial thriller that accessibly conveys the intricacies of a world in which a company can make millions on other companies whose stocks decline in value. New Yorker Evan Stoess, scarred by his time at a prep school where his less-than-fashionable attire earned him the denigrating nickname of Kmart, is obsessed with making as much money as he possibly can—and with rubbing his success in the faces of his teenage foes. He’s prepared to do anything to achieve his goal. When fate scuttles a lucrative deal and hands him a setback, the resourceful and unscrupulous Evan is soon scheming again. Celebrity cameos—Jim Cramer and Jennifer Lawrence appear—don’t add much, and the ending pulls a few punches, but readers will look forward to seeing more from Scofield, who has worked as a securities attorney and is currently a corporate lawyer. Agent: Krista Goering, Krista Goering Literary Agency.

January 15, 2014
Scofield's debut novel, a financial thriller, introduces readers to a main character so difficult and full of malice that he makes Hannibal Lector seem like a kindly old uncle with quirky dietary habits. Evan Stoess, the byproduct of a ritzy prep school education but born out of wedlock to a trailer park-trash mom who raised him in a home dominated by an abusive stepfather, envies the rich and successful to the point of obsessiveness. Evan, who works in finance, spends much of his free time scheming ways to grow rich and spying on a wealthy man and his family. When Evan manages to persuade his employers to invest in a nascent company that might have stumbled upon the cure for a terrible disease, he thinks he's found his ticket to the top. But that comes to a halt when everything tilts and he's wiped out, along with his company. After his firing, Evan is hired by a firm that profited from his mistakes, and soon, he's come up with a new plan involving short sales of stock to enrich both the company and himself. But the price Evan must pay in order to make his plan work is high and requires a great sacrifice. The question, Scofield poses, is how far will Evan go to succeed and get revenge on the people who have wronged him? Scofield, an attorney, writes knowledgeably about high finance, but unless readers are familiar with the terminology, they'll find much of the book incomprehensible. This is a tale spun in staccato and somewhat lifeless prose. Scofield buries the plot under a mountain of name-dropping minutiae, to the point of regaling readers with the brand of shorts worn by a store clerk. An intriguing idea that could have been better executed but instead ends up top-heavy with dull technical detail, static writing and a hard-to-swallow conclusion.

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February 15, 2014
Evan Stoess graduated from one of the best prep schools in the country, courtesy of an absent father who left him with a full scholarship, along with an abusive mother and stepfather. But despite a stellar education, Evan always felt like an outsider, living with the nickname Kmart. When he lands the job of his dreams as a stock analyst and promptly picks a winner, he is riding high, until the CEO of the company dies, plunging the stock price and costing Evan his job. A few months later, he finds a new job, this time with a company that shorts stocks, betting they will falter. Once again Evan is riding high until he's not, but this time he realizes that if the current CEO dies, it will work in Evan's favor. Murder is now an option, and if he gets away with it, there will be no stopping him. Surprisingly, Stoess is a sympathetic character despite his murderous ways, which makes this debut novel an emotional rollercoaster of a read. Recommend it to fans of financial thrillers, especially those by Christopher Reich and Joseph Finder.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)