Review by Booklist Review
Sometimes it's fun to root for the bad guys, especially if they're not all that bad. Meltzer gives us two brothers playing Robin Hood, taking from the rich (a bank) and giving to the poor (their mother). Oliver Caruso is the successful one, working for one of the most exclusive private banks in all of Manhattan. Charlie Caruso is the wayward one, the guy who can't seem to hold down a job but is having too much fun to care. Against his better judgment, Oliver agrees to participate in a convoluted but seemingly foolproof scheme to transfer the $3 million in an abandoned account to their own offshore bank. Thing is, about a hundred times that amount gets transferred, and a colleague winds up dead for it. Oliver and Charlie are on the run now, not because the law is after them but because there were apparently a few others at the bank with plans of their own for that account. Meltzer, often called the Grisham of financial thrillers, has a knack for keeping a story moving while still throwing in plenty of insider information (here about the latest techniques in financial investigation). Long on plot, short on subtlety of character, but good fun for the pin-striped crowd. --Mary Frances Wilkens
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
This giddy fourth thriller by Meltzer (The First Counsel) mixes up banking, cyber-theft and Disney World in a fast-paced, fresh-scrubbed tale of financial adventure. Oliver Caruso is sweating out some scut work for Henry Lapidus, bigwig at Greene & Greene, a private bank so exclusive clients require $2 million just to open an account. When Oliver and his younger brother, Charlie, find proof that Lapidus has been sabotaging Oliver's career plans, the brothers conspire to rip off the lingering balance from a deceased client's account. Silly boys! Not only is the local security goon Shep (formerly Secret Service) already chiseling in on their scam, the real Secret Service thugs are on the case almost immediately. The $3 million the Carusos swiped has somehow cybernetically blossomed overnight to over $300 million. Desperate to clear their names, the boys escape to Florida, following the money to the daughter of the deceased millionaire, a former tech wizard for Disney with a secret invention everyone in this book would happily kill for. The ins and outs of how to steal money that isn't really there makes for an interesting premise if you don't think about it too much, but two flaws detract from the action. First, the narrative POV jumps too often from one character to the next and from present tense to past, making for a choppy read. Second, the novel's juvenile flavor from the PI who bluffs her way into a building by claiming to be searching for her mother's favorite sock to the hapless schoolboy dialogue ("You touched her cookies, didn't you?") loudly proclaims its Hardy Boys heritage. (Jan. 8) Forecast: Meltzer's legion of fans will jump-start sales of his latest, prompted by massive television, print, radio and transit advertising campaigns and a 12-city author tour. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
If it weren't for the presence of Mickey Mouse, this would be a convoluted, confusing mystery understood only by those who follow the arcane world of high finance. Two brothers, Charlie and Oliver Caruso, work in an exclusive bank that caters mostly to the rich and crooked. Under a federal law, any money left in an account over a certain number of years and that has not been claimed either by the depositor or his/her heirs, gets sent to the General Fund of the state. One of the brothers finds such an account ready to be turned over to the eager hands in Albany, but he is tempted by the amount involved: more than $3 million. Believing that they have discovered the perfect crime, the Carusos deftly manipulate computer transfers, placing the money in a phony account. Of course, their plan is doomed from the start, and a rather exciting chase begins in New York and ends up in the tunnels of Disney World. In the unabridged version, reader Scott Brick gives the men personalities that resemble a cross between the Hardy Boys and the Golden Girls, with their alternating hair-raising escapes and snide remarks to each other. However, Brick manages to keep our interest, even through the dense financial sections. The abridged version cuts out a lot of the murky stuff and focuses on the truly exciting, well-plotted, and complex actions of the brothers, the Secret Service, a woman who claims to be the daughter of the original depositor....and, of course, Mickey. Tony Goldwyn has fun with his less-challenging reading, getting to skip over recitations of account numbers and balances. Both versions will be popular additions to library collections, with smaller libraries urged to try the abridged book. Joseph L. Carlson, Lompoc P.L., CA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
What begins as a tidy scheme to steal a measly $3 million from a closely held private bank quickly spins out of control-in the biggest and wildest of Meltzer's paranoid action fantasies (The First Counsel, 2001, etc.). All Oliver Caruso has to show for his four years as an associate at Greene & Greene is $81,000 in family medical debt, a key to the private elevator, and access to several of his senior colleagues' passcodes. When his brother Charlie, another check-chaser at Greene & Greene, shows him how to drain an account so small nobody, including Martin Duckworth, its late signatory, will ever miss the money, he puts up token resistance. But finding that his boss won't even recommend him for business school, Oliver throws in with Charlie, and in no time at all, the two have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. Dangerously beyond, in fact, since the modest $3 million they've spirited into an offshore account they thought nobody would notice has inexplicably ballooned into an alarmingly noticeable $313 million. Suddenly everybody wants a piece of Oliver and Charlie: G&G security chief Shep Graves, bulldog private eye Jo Ann Lemont, and a pair of Secret Service Agents who seem to stand for something more than truth, justice, and the American way. When a fatality in Grand Central Station bumps the stakes up to the toxic zone, the brothers take off for Miami in hope of finding Duckworth still alive at his last reported address. Instead, they find his alluring daughter and a monster scam worth zillions-and it isn't long before the well-armed folks on their trail find them. A satisfyingly helter-skelter shootout in the bowels of the Magic Kingdom rings down the curtain. "This isn't a stupid book!" Oliver rages before he has any inkling just how deep he's in. He's only half-right. It's an exceptionally well-judged stupid book. Author tour
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
