BFF Steph is back and she LOVED this book:
Okay – I have always been a sucker for a financial thriller – ever since my days as a Wharton undergrad finance major, so when offered the opportunity to review The Gods of Greenwich by Norb Vonnegut (any relation to Kurt?), I jumped.
This book is touted as a financial thriller – and technically it is. Jimmy Cusak is a down-on-his-luck, about to be foreclosed upon hedge fund manager, who’s hedge fund has gone belly up thanks to his father-in-law’s call on his position in the fund. The call takes significant monies out of the Jimmy’s fund.
Good guy that he is, Jimmy found positions with other funds for all his employees, but he himself has no where to go. His wife is pregnant and he is about to lose his condo to the mortgage company. Desperate – Jimmy is open to any opportunity and takes a “too good to be true” position with Leeser Capital, a Greenwich hedge fund run by Cy Leeser. And then the games begin! There is an attempt by Leeser to take down an Icelandic bank and the equal revenge of an Icelandic banker, through his art dealer brother, to take out Leeser Capital, the mysterious hedging tactics of Leeser (the “secret sauce”), and the crazy head trader at Leeser Capital, all of which qualify this book as a financial thriller - BUT IT IS SO MUCH MORE!
And it is the more part that I loved about this book. Jimmy’s wife Emi has prosopagnosia, face blindness. Basically, Emi cannot recognize the people she knows by their faces. She recognizes Jimmy by a two star lapel pin -
“Emi spotted the two-star lapel pin on Cusak’s lapel, and her smile widened enough for the world to forget Mona Lisa.” But she wonders how she will recognize their child.
Leeser’s wife Bianca (“‘Your job is to be dumb, dark and decorative . . .’”) is known to regularly dump his suits and belongings out the window, use his wildly expensive wine in jarred spaghetti sauce (“‘To plump up the sauce . . .’”), and has a pair of dachshunds name Freddy and Ginger. Then of course there is Rachel, our hitwoman, an RN whose “cover allowed her to bail out the world’s problems one septuagenarian at a time.” The sideline plots in this story are what makes this book. It is such a great read and goes no where you would expect!
Newman Communication provided a review copy of this book. All opinions are my own.
What are you reading and where are you going?
Your Comments
This one does sound intriguing….thanks for sharing.
Here’s MY SUNDAY SALON POST
I’m about to start an action-packed novel, too. It’s Hound of the Baskervilles. Someone thought it was a children’s book (!) and it’s on the list I’m trying to read (1001 Children’s Books You Must….)
Today I rant about the difficulties of trying to find copies of all 1001 books in my Sunday Salon post, Sunday Salon: I Have Trouble Reading Children’s Books. Perhaps you will have some good ideas for me! And, as a reminder, I also have my Readerbuzz July Giveaway going on: a $25 Amazon gift card! It’s international!