THE FLACK

A transplanted Midwestern reporter’s dream job in San Francisco turns into an even more improbable nightmare.

Despite his obvious lack of qualifications, Curt Hinton is recruited for the position of the Bay Area Logistics Company’s vice president of corporate communications by his old college chum, Angel Reddish, Balco’s chief operations officer. Lured by a fabulous salary, lavish perks, and the humanity displayed by Balco founder Gehrig Weiskopf toward all his employees, he uproots his wife, Page, a pregnant educational consultant, and moves to a company-supplied dream house, only to find when he arrives for his first day on the job that Angel’s been killed in a carjacking—or, as Det. Mando Fierro of the Oakland PD puts it, a murder disguised to look like a carjacking. His best friend’s death is only the first of many unpleasant surprises Curt faces. Angel’s widow, cybersecurity consultant Aiysha Miller, gives him the cold shoulder at the funeral. Sidney Graves, Balco’s chief financial officer, is stung by Curt’s disagreement during a senior staff meeting about how to deal with the imminent threat of unionization by predatory Rudy Szymanski of IWW–Local 37, and turns against him. Ron Talbot, an immigration reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle, invites him to comment on a video showing a man wearing a Balco hat raping a woman. Curt’s secretary, beautiful Korynne Vuong, makes increasingly aggressive advances on him. If Curt’s descent into the hell of corporate communications is hard to believe, his success in responding to one crisis after the next, presumably enabled by his journalistic skills, is even harder—and his survival seems more and more unlikely as veteran thrillmeister Parks deepens his peril.

Readers willing to suspend their disbelief in the name of their own abiding paranoia will enjoy every bumpy moment.