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Overview
Geoff Mann is young, tough, athletic, handsome, amoral: a vice president on his way up to the top of the corporate ladder. Steve Dern is just married, also a vice president and a contender for the CEO job. And when the old pirate who runs the company brings his vice presidents together at headquarters in Boston, Geoff takes a high-risk gamble to impress the boss that gets him fired on the spot, and Steve is chosen for CEO. Immediately the idea of revenge on his rival excites Geoff, gives him a new game to play, and so without remorse or a wasted motion, he goes on a wild, risky, killing rampage and kidnaps his rival's wife. The only man who can stop him is Steve, who got the job Geoff desired.Editorials
Publishers Weekly -
Picking up where he left off in The Guardian, Eidson again uses a kidnapping set in Boston as the vehicle for a nonstop suspense ride. This time, the victims are 30-something couple Steve and Lisa Dern. After boat-manufacturing executive Steve beats out ruthless, thrill-addicted Geoff Mann in a campaign for corporate president of Jansten Associatesthen gets him fired for reckless investingMann vows revenge. Not only does nutty Mann kidnap Lisa, he turns the ransom-exchange process into a Machiavellian plot to take over much of the Hub's drug tradeand along the way kills two men, the CEO who fired him and an assistant pimp who tries to boss around the hooker who snags Mann's heart. The trail of bodies eventually leads to a mano a mano waterfront confrontation between the two yuppie antagonists, with satisfying if predictable results. Eidson's action scenes are charged with exquisite tension, but the cartoonish Mann too often serves merely as a convenient excuse for notching up the violence. And with a plot and characters so like their counterparts in The Guardian, many readers may find themselves suffering narrative deja vu. (June)Library Journal
The scene is greater Boston; the time, the present; the theme, revenge. Geoff Mann, Wharton MBA and "a terror in the real estate world," suddenly finds himself passed over in his quest to become president and CEO of Jansten Enterprises, a multinational conglomerate. This insult drives him into a frenzy. In a fit of pique and because he's flat broke, he takes up with a ready-for-anything hooker and her low-life pimp, kidnaps his rival's wife, and demands a ransom of $150,000 for her safe return. Eidson (The Guardian, LJ 9/15/96) invests this old pay-up-or-else routine with a couple of fresh if not revolutionary twists, and readers who are not put off by brutality and bloodshed, quick-and-dirty couplings, and characters who should have their mouths soaped will find enough excitement to follow the tale to the last unwinding of the stout main thread of the plot. A.J. Anderson, Simmons Coll., BostonBook Details
Published
May 1, 1998
Publisher
Forge
Pages
317
Format
Hardcover
ISBN
9780312866006