RASCAL MONEY

by Joseph R. Garber ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 1989

A sophomoric but often very funny first novel about a giant computer company's attempts to prevent a hostile takeover by a pygmy. The giant is PegaSys, brainchild of Scott C. Thatcher, archconservative, pillar of rectitude, lovable curmudgeon, benevolent despot, and spiritual father to brainstormer Mike Ash (""Mad Mike""); financial V.P. Louise Bowman (""the Iron Nun"")--secretly carrying on an affair with Mike; security-officer Ray Knight; and (eventually) Knight's nemesis, the mysterious computer-hacker Wintergreen. The pygmy is American Interdyne Worldwide (""the worst company in America""), whose oafish president, Brian Shawby, abetted by his Mephistophelean banker Nick Lee, plots to buy PegaSys using a loan secured by the assets of PegaSys itself and the financing of the smilingly treacherous Okinakao Hidetake--who plans to bushwack Shawby and Lee and grab PegaSys for his own conglomerate Seppuku Ltd. Author Garber's plotting is often as lackadaisical as Shawby's--his revelation that Thatcher's tony wife Livy secretly writes bodice-rippers doesn't go anywhere; neither does the duel between Knight and Wintergreen; and far too much space is wasted on Joe Jonas, who quits PegaSys to work in Hollywood. But readers who want to find out how PegaSys fends off Shawby and his crew of incompetents (like his secretary Jennifer, who ""spent her time reading Danielle Steel's latest novel. Slowly. Moving her lips"") will be entertained along the way with the relentlessly facetious antics of characters who seem to have been plucked out of third-grade classrooms and set down in corporate ofrices and bedrooms. Brightly, riotously superficial: an enjoyably trashy farce.

Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1989

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Contemporary

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1989

Categories: FICTION