The Garden of Betrayal

June 21, 2010
Vance follows the success of his first book, Restitution, with another engrossing financial thriller built on his 20 years of experience as a trader at Goldman Sachs. One night in 2003, Mark and Claire Wallace's 12-year-old son, Kyle, goes out to rent a movie on Manhattan's Upper West Side and never returns, leaving his family devastated. In the present, Mark's career as an independent energy analyst gets an unexpected boost when he's offered secret research that appears to predict just how much crude the Saudis expect to pump before the depletion of their oil reserves. In the course of authenticating this data, Mark finds himself increasingly entangled in an ever-widening mystery that includes the murders of several of his friends and eventually encompasses the fate of his missing son. Vance is adept at inserting complex information without slowing the pace of the action or disrupting ongoing suspense.

March 15, 2010
An advisor to hedge-fund traders learns that the disappearance of his 12-year-old son is linked to international terrorism in this often colorless, disappointing thriller.

Vance (Restitution, 2007) begins his sophomore effort with a haunting prologue. On a cold afternoon in 2003, three men kidnap Kyle Wallace, a 12-year-old boy. As they pull him off Riverside Drive in Manhattan, the youth's cap goes"tumbling down the mouth of a storm drain…never to be seen again." The opening's swiftly built tension dissipates as Vance jumps ahead seven years, shifting to the first-person narrative of the boy's father, Mark Wallace. Wallace's knowledge of the politics of international-energy supplies has made him a successful Wall Street seer. At the moment he is confronting a series of events that follow in swift succession. First, in the Baltic Sea, terrorists explode a pipeline that was to deliver natural gas from Russia to Germany. Then, Theresa Roxas,"a Latin Audrey Hepburn playing a Wharton business school grad," hands Wallace an iPod loaded with files that reveal the truth about how much oil the Saudis possess (more than they let on). Wallace next meets with a militant U.S. senator, who seems aware of the information Roxas passed on to Wallace, as does hedge-fund player Alex Coleman, a troubled friend of Wallace's, who later dies in a bathtub, suspiciously. As for Wallace's missing son, NYPD detective Reggie Kinnard periodically checks in with new developments in the case and, predictably, Wallace's complex work (often explained in dialogue laden with text book exposition) appears to have played a part in the boy's disappearance. Wallace's wife and daughter, who, like Wallace, remain rather two-dimensional, arrive on the scene to learn what happened to Kyle. The answer comes much sooner than expected, setting the final third of the story adrift.

Details of international politics and technology overwhelm a potentially gripping family tale.

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May 1, 2010
Oil industry analyst Mark Wallace mysteriously winds up with vital pieces of data about the future of energy production. Wallace and his family are still mourning the disappearance of his son Kyle seven years before, and evidence begins mounting that these events are connected. VERDICT The action scenes are brief but compelling, and the financial conspiracy is believable in this second novel by Vance (after "Restitution"). But his real strength is his sympathetic portrayal of a grieving family, and that takes this novel a step beyond ordinary financial thrillers. [See Prepub Alert, "LJ" 3/1/10; 35,000-copy first printing; ebook ISBN 978-0-307-59380-1; also available from Random House Audio.]

Copyright 2010 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from May 15, 2010
Seven years after the abduction of their 12-year-old son, the marriage of Mark and Claire Wallace remains deeply strained. But Mark is back at work as an energy-industry analyst, selling his insights into the sleaziest corner of the financial universe to hedge funds and still working with a determined NYPD detective to find the person who abducted Kyle. On the day a new natural-gas pipeline is destroyed in Russia, seemingly by terrorists, a new lead reopens the search for Kyles abductor, creates even deeper fissures in his marriage, and threatens the lives of Mark, Claire, and their now 17-year-old daughter, Kate. To protect them and find Kyles kidnapper, Mark must thwart a labyrinthine plot to create a global energy monopoly. The Garden of Betrayal is a skillfully crafted, highly intelligent, page-turning thriller, even better than Vances fine debut novel, Restitution (2007). Its filled with arresting characters: hedge-fund sharks; a wise, kindly OPEC insider; an overly ambitious senator; his odious fixer; Czech killers; Mossad agents; a dazzling Latina petroleum engineer; and Marks daughter, Kate, whose computer skills help keep her family alive and her parents marriage intact. The tension mounts relentlessly. Every short chapter offers a jolt. Plausible red herrings abound. Alex Drydens Red to Black (2009) also used the same energy-monopoly scenario to fine effect. Vances readers will also wonder if that scenario isnt already underway.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)