Trust Fund

Like many American fathers, Jimmy Lee Hancock likes to get nice things for his kids. Teddy, his eldest son, got the CEO slot at Warfield Capital, the Hancock's multibillion dollar hedge fund. Bo, the black sheep trading genius who actually runs Warfield, got the title of chief operating officer. And if good-looking Paul's a really good boy, he can trade in that musty old Connecticut governorship for a shiny, new U.S. presidency.

But first things first. Things like removing the hard-drinking, carousing, possibly womanizing, PR-nightmare-in-the-making Bo to a family compound in Montana and replacing him with duplicitous trading whiz Frank Ramsey. And with Bo tucked away from the prying eyes of the press, Jimmy Lee can ice Paul's presidential cake by cooking his primary opponent's political goose with career-destroying evidence. The evidence, offered for sale by a deeply covered government cabal with an eye towards global domination, is Jimmy Lee's for a mere $2 billion.

Meanwhile, literally back at the ranch, Bo gets word from a trusted Warfield insider that Ramsey's up to no fiscal good. Then Jimmy Lee suffers a heart attack and the loose-lipped Warfield snitch wakes up dead. As Bo returns to Manhattan to see Jimmy Lee, reclaim his rightful place, and rid the shop of rats, bodies drop like autumn leaves and the plot, Yogi Berra-like, comes to frequent and ever-more sinister forks in the road and gleefully takes them all.

And very effectively, too. Frey's no world-class writer. His characters tend to be as one-dimensional as their dialogue is wooden, but readers who notice likely won't care a whit. As a world-class financier (formerly in mergers and acquisitions at J.P. Morgan, now with a private equity firm), Frey knows the ins and outs of very high finance and has an historical and bestselling knack (see The Insider, The Legacy, The Inner Sanctum, etc.) for weaving that knowledge into intricate, gripping, and bankable plots. Trust Fund's among them. --Michael Hudson