Power Play

✍ Scribed by Joseph Finder

• Publisher: Hachette UK
• Year: 2007
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 194 KB
• Edition: Reprint
• Category: Fiction
• ISBN: 1429917628

✦ Synopsis

It was the perfect retreat for a troubled company. No cell phones. No BlackBerrys. No cars. Just a luxurious, remote lodge surrounded by thousands of miles of wilderness.

All the top officers of the Hammond Aerospace Corporation are there. And one last-minute substitute -- a junior executive named Jake Landry. He's a steady, modest, and taciturn guy with a gift for keeping his head down and a turbulent past he's trying to put behind him.

Jake's uncomfortable with all the power players he's been thrown in with, with all the swaggering and the posturing. The only person there he knows is the female CEO's assistant--his ex-girlfriend, Ali.

When a band of backwoods hunters crash the opening-night dinner, the executives suddenly find themselves held hostage by armed men who will do anything, to anyone, to get their hands on the largest ransom in history. Now, terrified and desperate and cut off from the rest of the world, the captives are at the mercy of hard men with guns who may not be what they seem.

The corporate big shots hadn't wanted Jake there. But now he's the only one who can save them.

• Power Play* is a non-stop, pulse-pounding, high-stakes thriller that will hold the reader riveted until the very last page.

From Publishers Weekly

If Jake Landry, a tough guy with an understanding of airplane engineering and an innate grasp of corporate politics, is too good to be true, he's still fun to watch in this sleek thriller from bestseller Finder (Killer Instinct). A junior executive at California's Hammond Aerospace, Landry possesses a remarkably flexible intelligence, which lands him on a high-end corporate weekend at a lodge called Rivers Inlet, where the new CEO, Cheryl Tobin, discreetly asks Landry to help her identify corrupt executives. Almost immediately, the lodge is assailed by five men who at first appear to be hunters turned vicious at the sight of the weekend participants' enormous wealth. As they interrogate the executives, however, it becomes clear that they know quite a bit about Hammond and its workings. Landry's job, then, is to figure out their purpose as well as rescue the entire crew. Tight, fluid writing more than compensates for the occasional plot implausibility. 200,000 first printing; author tour. (Aug.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Bookmarks Magazine

Fans agree that Joseph Finder (Company Man, 2005; Killer Instinct, 1/2 Sept/Oct 2006) has perfected the corporate thriller, favoring the rocket engine of plot over the quiet architecture of character. His eighth novel, Power Play, races along by omitting the texture and depth that might slow the pace; only the protagonist, Jake Landry, is fleshed out. Critics acknowledge this flaw but forgive the author as they're dragged along by the fast-paced action. The New York Times* suggests that Finder's novels "could appeal to a broader audience than the one for which they aim." Members of that broader audience might notice the flat characters and occasional clichŽs, but the suspense and tension will keep them turning the pages.

Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.