BOTTOM LINE

Ripped from the business pages, a tale of corporate malfeasance, greed, and, you guessed it, love and forgiveness.

Davis has a diverse background. A former commodities broker at the Chicago Board of Trade, a reporter, a former columnist for the Chicago Tribune, an award-winning painter and art teacher, he is the author of children’s books and a novel, Dirty Money (1992). Nick Blake is a partner in a prominent consultant and accountancy firm, the fictitious Martell and Company, LLP. He is close to his boss, the egomaniac Adrian Martell, and envied by the other partners, especially Martell’s son Billy, who runs the accounting business. Blake has a lover, Rita Fitzpatrick, “ace business reporter and columnist...for the Examiner.” When Fitzpatrick’s column reports trouble at Martell and Co., suspicion falls, naturally, on Blake. Has he given away the company secrets, whispering sweet nothings in the sack, a fool for lust, or has he been hacked? Then, captain of the industry Martell runs afoul of the SEC and flees with the partners’ funds. While the company takes cautious steps, Blake, with the help of PI Ben Cutler, decides to track Martell on his own. As the book begins in March 2001, the reader can expect the events of September of that year to make an appearance; and a needless, gratuitous appearance it is.

This sort of story appears with alarming frequency in major newspapers, reported meticulously, discussed dispassionately and without the casual misogyny.