The Social Climber's Handbook

March 14, 2011
Jong-Fast pokes twisted fun at New York City's elite in her trite follow-up to Normal Girl. It's the spring of 2008, and trader Dick Greenbaum and his wife, Daisy, have clawed their way to the highest levels of Upper East Side society: they've got a $12 million Park Avenue apartment, their daughters attend private schools, and Daisy volunteers at the best charities. But the financial collapse looms, and a few skeletons are rattling around in their walk-in closets. Daisy is prepared to remove any obstacles in their wayâstarting with Dick's "reputation-ruining" boss (poison) and his meddlesome ex-mistress (blunt force trauma). But when a pair of bloggers begin investigating Dick's company's financial dealings, they have no idea they'll have to confront the Upper East Side's most unlikely murderess. Daisy's victims deserve their grisly comeuppance, painted as they are by Jong-Fast as simple villains, though Daisy herself is hardly an avenging angel. As a campy bloodbath à la Patrick Bateman in Jimmy Choos, the story succeeds, but the critique of the excesses of the recent past gets lost in the fluff.

March 1, 2011

Young Manhattan matron comes up with a unique solution to emerging threats to her family's future.

There is something just a bit off about Daisy Greenbaum. In spite of her incredible wealth, good looks and bright twin daughters, she does not quite fit in among skeletal lady-lunchers in her Upper East Side social scene. While she manages for the most part to mask her inner rage, filling her dull days with charity projects, the burgeoning 2008 financial crisis finally offers her long-dormant inner sociopath a chance to run free. Her husband Dick is a Wall Street math whiz who has figured out how to make a killing in credit default swaps. But Dick, although deeply flawed, is beginning to fret over the long-term financial and ethical implications of his work for The Bank (think Goldman Sachs). He can see the end coming and wants to go to the authorities. But when he reaches out to his boss John, a preppy tool who has none of Dick's scruples, John threatens to ruin him for even thinking of exposing them. Enter Daisy, who, unbeknownst to Dick, drugs and murders John while making it look like a suicide. So Dick gets promoted. Daisy is then vexed to discover that Dick's former mistress, the Lady Petra Kingly, is once again sniffing around her husband. Trophy wife to a much-older man who is about to get caught running an elaborate Ponzi scheme, Lady Petra sees Dick as her only chance at a lucrative future. Dick, while no longer interested in Petra, fears that she will reveal his secrets. Daisy once again takes matters in hand, just as Dick starts to realize, with an appropriate amount of gratitude, what she is up to. Meanwhile, an ambitious young blogger, Candy Ross Rose, sees a career-making opportunity in taking down The Bank. She fixates on seducing none other than Dick Greenbaum. Big mistake. Jong-Fast's edgy follow-up to Normal Girl (2000) seems meant to be a broad social satire about the über-wealthy, but it's held back by the underwritten Daisy, whose murderous impulses are the most interesting thing about her.

Darkly comic take on the "greed is good" shenanigans that led up to the recent financial apocalypse.

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

April 15, 2011
At the outset, the second novel by Jong-Fast (Normal Girl, 2000), survivor of a celebrity childhood, seems to be a standard tale about the whining ultrarich, whose lifestyles are endangered by an economic downturn, but instead it is an outrageous satire involving serial murder and mayhem. Daisy and Dick Greenbaum are extremely rich but do not fit the stereotypes. Not thin and blond, Daisy has wide feet. Dick, short and fat, is a banker and a math genius who sees the implications of all the dire financial shenanigans at his bank and elsewhere, but never takes action. Their eight-year-old twin daughters are a mismatched set. Undercurrents of mean-girl intrigue and people intent on bringing them down are par for the course, but Daisy has a deadly solution that has been in her tool kit since fat camp. There is no loyalty or morality here, only people willing to do anything to maintain their status. Jong-Fast presents a cast of characters so emotionally bankrupt that readers feel may relieved to only have financial needs. Darkly comic, weird, and compelling.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)