WAKING UP

A debut novel set in the meshed worlds of real estate, finance and pharmaceuticals.

“You heard me, jerkoff. I got your son.” Michael Hayes has had better phone calls than the one that opens Traum’s novel, but at least he’s got a couple of things going for him: His daughter is safe, and he’s got the gruff-voiced bad guy’s phone number on his caller ID. Unless…Well, he’s got one thing going for him, apart from the help of a few friendly, efficient cops, some of whom have done this enough to know that you don’t have to look at the address to know which house is the victim’s: “It had to be the one all lit up. He grunted, ‘That’s gotta be it, Gus,’ to his partner.” Enter Hayes’s faithful friend Soo-Mee Young, of piercing analytical ability and a habit of remembering bad clients from years past—one of whom, a nefarious mobster from across the seas, bears Hayes considerable ill will for losing a chunk of his change in a bad market, and just may be tied up in the current brouhaha.

Traum draws on a career as a real-estate investment banker to lend this procedural a touch of realism.