Silent Partner

Financial chicanery is Stephen Frey's forte, and in his newest thriller (following The Insider and The Day Trader), he sets up one of the world's richest men and a young bank executive, who's trying to wrest custody of her son from her well-connected ex-husband, in a sting operation to expose blatant racism in the mortgage practices of a big Virginia financial institution. Angela Day, whose African American college roommate died in her arms after a racially motivated attack, is a gutsy and appealing woman whose life is turned upside down when she gets involved with Jake Lawrence, a billionaire with his own reasons for wanting to expose the corruption at the core of the bank that employs her. When he offers her the chance to get her son back, she plunges into a world of double-dealing where nothing and no one are what they seem and everyone's motives are suspect. Some of the coincidences strain credulity, and the characters are too one-dimensional to care about, but Frey makes the most of his convoluted plot and wraps up the details with an unexpected love story. --Jane Adams