THE STREET

Wall Street, 1992: George Weller, upright chairman of the New York Stock Exchange, battles upstart vice chairman Minor Pincus, who covets the top job, to keep the market open during a selloff that reaches near-panic proportions just one week before the presidential election. And the President himself, a wily Populist seeking a second term, uses less scrupulous means to avoid the unpleasant prospect of closing down the NYSE: his ambitious aide Cal Carter arranges, as a diversionary tactic, that old-line broker Arvid Jensen be falsely accused of masterminding a bear raid on stock prices. Can Jensen's dilettante daughter Jeanne, a volunteer in the Manhattan office of the Committee to Re-Elect the President, clear her dad's name? Yes, she can--but she'll have to take time out from her bedroom hijinks with Constantine Telkos, a roguish ethnic stud with mob connections who heads a bucket-shop securities firm and fences stolen bearer bonds in Paris. Unfortunately, Lindquist is no Paul Erdman--not even an Arthur Halley--and the melodramatic goings-on here are unsupported by convincing details of Wall Street ways and means. With stock characterizations, contorted plotting, and a curiously anachronistic sense of the market, this bid can be sold short.