A banker and a media mogul find themselves the pawns of a Russian businessman in Marshall’s novel.

Wealthy Corbin van Sloot has a complex personal life with a patrician wife and a mistress whom he considers “Bond girl material”; his teenage daughter is experimenting with drugs. As the New York City-based CEO of the London-based Whitehall Banking Group, he has great responsibilities. His biggest concern at the moment, though, is ditching the bank’s worst client: Star Enterprises, a tabloid publisher nominally run by the extravagant and incompetent plutocrat Winston Crumm. When Winston’s debts grow so large that Whitehall is forced to pull his credit line, the mogul finds an unlikely new backer: Russian oligarch Maxim Ripovsky, who steps in with an offer to bail Star out of its financial woes—anonymously—so long as Winston and his tabloids are willing to do him a few favors. Meanwhile, the same Ripovsky has gobbled up a number of shares in Whitehall and is attempting to blackmail Corbin for a seat on the company’s board. Financial reporter Bob Mandell, a “big game hunter” with a nose for scandal, gets word of all this and launches an investigation. Who will be left standing when the curtain falls—and does anyone deserve to be? Marshall’s jocular prose is a perfect match for the blazer-clad, sharp-elbowed world of finance, as where Winston considers the books at Star Enterprises: “The most frequent defections had come from the financial side, charged with keeping the company in the black. At best, it was a smoky gray, as the newspaper business bled jobs and money like a hemophiliac tossed into a thorn bush. That wasn’t just in New York, of course; it was everywhere.” The book takes a while to get started, and the inherent unlikability of all the main characters will probably make it difficult for readers to root for anyone in particular. Even so, there are a few fun twists and delightfully barbed sendups of the New York business milieu.

A spirited but slightly uneven satire set in the world of finance.

On the back nine of her 60s, a beautiful, canny woman remains a pro at snagging rich old duffers, then leaving them in the rough, and possibly in the ground.

In Marshall’s (Little Miss Sure Shot, 2014, etc.) first thriller, septuagenarian Dean and sexagenarian Suzy Perry married recently, shortly after the death of the bride’s previous spouse. On the surface, Suzy seems the ideal country club wife for moneyed Dean, whose house overlooks a golf course. But the slim, bridge-playing, Mercedes-driving blonde may have skeletons as well as Prada in her Westchester County closet. She talks little about her previous life in Atlanta with her former husband, who died of a heart attack that surprised everyone, including a cardiologist. Some sleuthing on the part of Dean’s son, Alex, reveals that Suzy may have had yet another husband who unexpectedly died decades earlier from heart failure in suburban St. Louis. If true, Suzy had a different name back then—Bettina—and a child who seems to have vanished. Or was it Bettina who vanished, morphing into a psychopath with no past and multiple murders on her score card? Her disturbing backstory includes abuse, betrayal, and an injury that resulted in a permanent limp “that sullied an image of otherwise near-perfection, like a blotch on the front of a snow-white dress.” Lively conversation and playful descriptions such as a dog’s “wagging his curved tail like a metronome” fill the pages. Points awarded for a thriller with a median character age that appears to be bumping 60. The book starts strongly, with Suzy on the run and the past events revealed at a good pace. Midbook the introduction of a blackmailer works well, but a disturbing medical issue has no follow-up. Ultimately, like Suzy herself, the story ends up limping a bit, though the final few pages may tempt a reader to a smile and wonder if a sequel could be crafted.

An above-par thriller hitting the sweet spot between sympathy and repulsion for a probable killer.