DECEIVED WITH GREED

In this novel, a successful investment broker stumbles on his boss’s illegal scheme and gets drawn into a lurid world of nihilistic avarice.

Charles Collier has worked at Priority Investments for 16 years and suddenly lands the biggest account of his career: the Kaiser Foundation, an organization that has garnered “world renowned success,” run by Adolph Kaiser. Charles’ boss, William Fossett, the CEO of the firm, assigns him a new hire, Dennis Reading, to assist with the deal. But Charles starts to suspect something about the account is terribly awry. While reading a classified internal report, he notices a massive charge to Kaiser—$1.3 million—listed nebulously as an “imposed custom expense,” something that he’s never heard of. Eventually, Charles realizes just how crooked William is—he’s in cahoots with Dennis, embezzling millions from clients. When William suspects Charles is onto him, he is willing to have the broker killed. Apparently, there are rumors William murdered a former partner. When William suddenly turns up dead and Dennis disappears, Charles is faced with a moral dilemma. Does he expose the crime or take the embezzled millions for himself, an illicit strategy pushed by his chronically unfaithful wife, Emily? Kazlausky’s timely tale is as ambitious as it is complex—he means to tell a kind of parable, exposing the underbelly of greed through a tangled web of murder, conspiratorial plots, and double-crossings. But the slow-paced story eventually becomes didactic and sermonizing—the author never tires of reminding readers of his important moral lesson. Dennis clearly delineates this while considering a betrayal of William with the CEO’s sister, Helen: “The thought of money, escaping to another country, spending his life with Helen, it all spelled out...greed.” While the prose is clear, it is often featureless—there are few literary embellishments in the intricate narrative.

An intriguing but preachy financial tale.