A multilayered and consistently engaging rags-to-riches story.
In Fisher and Orey’s historical novel, a successful entrepreneur sees his professional and personal life torn apart.
As the story opens in 1974, readers meet Scott Newman, a high roller with a posh Fifth Avenue office and an enormous bank account. As he looks out on his world, he considers it to be heaven on Earth, and a far cry from his former, blue-collar life. He remembers how his father, a low-paid route salesman for a local bread company worked himself into an early grave; Scott decides early on that he doesn’t want a life like that for himself. Instead, he eventually builds a light bulb telemarketing company, Argon Industries, into a powerhouse that makes him very wealthy. Then, one day, FBI agents burst into his trading rooms, accusing him and his partner, Doug Kaufman, of criminal activity. As the raid and its aftermath unfold, the narrative follows Scott’s memories of founding the company with Doug and meeting a wide array of challenges, from building their business expertise to dealing with thuggish extortionists. This flashback narrative spans decades, and when it loops back to the present, readers find Scott fuming with rage over his heavy-handed treatment at the hands of the FBI—and this stress lands him in the hospital. His challenge is to find a way to survive his setbacks and return to success, but the obstacles seem insurmountable as the government closes in.
Fisher and Orey’s novel opens with a rather familiar setup, but the book’s extensive flashbacks, detailing Scott and Doug’s past, will grab readers’ interest. The stories of their rise to corporate dominance are told with considerable slang and energy and get across the forward momentum of two guys trying to scratch and hustle their way to financial success: “Today it’s only a crazy dream,” Scott says about possibly opening a jewelry store, “but tomorrow I’ll begin working to make this reality.” The supporting characters in Scott’s life are as well fleshed out as the rest of his backstory; the present-day storyline, though, features by-the-numbers portrayals of federal agents, which the authors see fit to portray as almost uniformly snide, sneering, and whip-cracking—the type of antagonists who can be relied upon to say,Godfather-style, “this isn’t personal.” Fisher and Orey compensate by developing the chemistry between Scott and Doug, which is compelling at every stage of their association. The authors smartly anchor the book’s final act in the present rather than the past, bringing the action to a climax with some dramatic courtroom scenes in which Scott must fight for his life against charges of fraud and money laundering—even after it seems as if he’s been betrayed by his nearest and dearest. The work would have benefited from a stronger copy edit, and some elements of the story itself might raise eyebrows among less ardent capitalists—Scott may be charismatic, but no reader would want to do business with him. Ultimately, though, the novel’s sheer narrative energy carries the day.
A multilayered and consistently engaging rags-to-riches story.Pub Date: June 24, 2021
ISBN: 979-8524589842
Page Count: 394
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: April 21, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Hokey plot, good fun.
A business executive becomes an unjustly wanted man.
Walter Nash attends his estranged father Tiberius’ funeral, where Ty’s Army buddy, Shock, rips into him for not being the kind of man the Vietnam vet Ty was. Instead, Nash is the successful head of acquisitions for Sybaritic Investments, where he earns a handsome paycheck that supports his wife, Judith, and his teenage daughter, Maggie. An FBI agent approaches Nash after the funeral and asks him to be a mole in his company, because the feds consider chief executive Rhett Temple “a criminal consorting with some very dangerous people.” It’s “a chance to be a hero,” the agent says, while admitting that Nash’s personal and financial risks are immense. Indeed, readers soon find Temple and a cohort standing over a fresh corpse and wondering what to do with it. Temple is not an especially talented executive, and he frets that his hated father, the chairman of the board, will eventually replace him with Nash. (Father-son relationships are not glorified in this tale.) Temple is cartoonishly rotten. He answers to a mysterious woman in Asia, whom he rightly fears. He kills. He beds various women including Judith, whom he tries to turn against Nash. The story’s dramatic turn follows Maggie’s kidnapping, where Nash is wrongly accused. Believing Nash’s innocence, Shock helps him change completely with intense exercise, bulking up and tattooing his body, and learning how to fight and kill. Eventually he looks nothing like the dweeb who’d once taken up tennis instead of football, much to Ty’s undying disgust. Finding the victim and the kidnappers becomes his sole mission. As a child watching his father hunt, Nash could never have killed a living thing. But with his old life over—now he will kill, and he will take any risks necessary. His transformation is implausible, though at least he’s not green like the Incredible Hulk. Loose ends abound by the end as he ignores a plea to “not get on that damn plane,” so a sequel is a necessity.
Hokey plot, good fun.Pub Date: Nov. 11, 2025
ISBN: 9781538757987
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2025
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.
A lifetime’s worth of letters combine to portray a singular character.
Sybil Van Antwerp, a cantankerous but exceedingly well-mannered septuagenarian, is the titular correspondent in Evans’ debut novel. Sybil has retired from a beloved job as chief clerk to a judge with whom she had previously been in private legal practice. She is the divorced mother of two living adult children and one who died when he was 8. She is a reader of novels, a gardener, and a keen observer of human nature. But the most distinguishing thing about Sybil is her lifelong practice of letter writing. As advancing vision problems threaten Sybil’s carefully constructed way of life—in which letters take the place of personal contact and engagement—she must reckon with unaddressed issues from her past that threaten the house of cards (letters, really) she has built around herself. Sybil’s relationships are gradually revealed in the series of letters sent to and received from, among others, her brother, sister-in-law, children, former work associates, and, intriguingly, literary icons including Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry. Perhaps most affecting is the series of missives Sybil writes but never mails to a shadowy figure from her past. Thoughtful musings on the value and immortal quality of letters and the written word populate one of Sybil’s notes to a young correspondent while other messages are laugh-out-loud funny, tinged with her characteristic blunt tartness. Evans has created a brusque and quirky yet endearing main character with no shortage of opinions and advice for others but who fails to excavate the knotty difficulties of her own life. As Sybil grows into a delayed self-awareness, her letters serve as a chronicle of fitful growth.
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9780593798430
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
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