The Patriots Club

Michael Kramer breathes new life into a familiar plot. Thomas Boldon, a former juvenile hoodlum turned Wall Street mogul, is pitted against a secret organization of "patriots" who want to re-fashion the U.S. as they believe the Founding Founders would have wanted. Kidnapped, accused of murdering his mentor and colleague, fleeing the cops as well as the killers, Boldon leaps from crisis to crisis as he unravels a conspiracy that goes to the heart of America. Kramer seems to know what's appropriate for this narration because he departs from his usual methodical pace and delivers bursts of excitement that keep the story moving and the characters alive. A.L.H. (c) AudioFile 2005, Portland, Maine

June 13, 2005
Thomas Bolden, successful 32-year-old investment banker and Harlem Boys Club Foundation trustee, has come a long way from his turbulent childhood on the mean streets of Chicago. But his street smarts surface at the start of Reich's action-packed but convoluted latest (after Numbered Account
), when Bolden chases a pair of muggers through Manhattan's financial district after they rob his girlfriend, Jenny Dance. They abduct him at gunpoint, but after a perplexing interrogation by members of a mysterious clan, a narrow escape reunites him with Jenny. Bolden already knows too much, though, and the organization of the novel's title—a centuries-old secretive order of powerful lawyers, businessmen and politicians convened to preserve political special interest initiatives that the country's founding fathers defended—soon systematically dismantle Bolden's life. He and a newly pregnant Jenny run for their lives, tracked at every turn by the well-connected "club," which is headed by retired detective Francois Guilfoyle. While they each investigate the clandestine group, a flurry of politically fueled machinations unfolds, setting the stage for the obligatory showdown. Reich's conspiracy thriller eventually loses the momentum needed to deliver on the tight suspense it promises.