MONEY TO BURN

In Grippando’s latest, a Wall Street investment banker is neither bull nor bear—he’s a lamb led to slaughter.

Young Michael Cantella is a fast tracker at Saxton Silvers, a fast track Wall Street investment-banking firm. The good life is his—all the perks and all the toys that inevitably accrue to those extremely clever about money. But the good life is about to take a hit. Honeymooning in the Bahamas, Michael manages to lose his bride. Did beautiful, bright, endlessly sexy Ivy drink too much, fall off their sailboat, and plunge to her death? All anyone can say for sure is that she vanished. That 13-foot tiger shark snagged by a local fisherman? Well, maybe its stomach contents were tell-tale, maybe not. Flash forward four years. Michael, now 35, and a bit less the dazzling wunderkind, remains a Saxton Silvers mainstay with a new beautiful, bright, endlessly sexy wife, and if on occasion thoughts of Ivy darken contentment, he’s learned to cope. Then it happens—the relentless, incomprehensible process by which Michael is converted into a modern-day Job. Begin with the night his computer conveys the jaw-dropping news that a $13 million nest egg has vanished as completely and mysteriously as Ivy did. Soon after, Michael finds himself universally deplored as the viper who did the dirty to his own firm, bringing it to the verge of bankruptcy. Moreover—another frame-up—the cops like him for the murder of Chuck Bell, the obnoxious host of a popular TV money show. Clearly, Michael has enemies, and though he doesn’t know why they want him ruined, or who they are, they better not sell him short.

Grippando (Intent to Kill, 2009, etc.) serves up another full bore assault on plausibility, but his base won’t be put off by that.