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(More customer reviews)Joe Kolman, Naked Option (Harriman House, 2007)
I don't know how it is I came to start reading this odd subgenre known as the corporate thriller. (Okay, I do-- it's all Joe Finder's fault. But I digress.) I know as much about corporate culture as I do about quantum physics, and to be honest, I find quantum physics a lot more interesting. So why is it that the corporate thrillers I read end up capturing my imagination? It's more impressive when the book in question really delves into the world it's floating atop, instead of simply using it as the backdrop for a conventional thriller plot. That's the case with Joe Kolman's Naked Option, which goes into all kinds of detail on, well, everything, from stock trading to Jewish marriage customs-- and somehow it's all utterly engrossing.Yes, I'm as confused by that statement as you are, but I guarantee you-- if you pick up Naked Option, you'll find it just as riveting as I did. I mean, come on, it's a corporate thriller blurbed by Alison Lurie. How can you go wrong?
David Ackerman is not having a good month. He lost his bank $112 million in the wake of September 11, and subsequently lost his job (and his Series 7 license). His girlfriend has moved across the country to take a job as a film critic. Not a good time to be Dave Ackerman, that's for sure. But a corporate lawyer looking for a sharp options trader gives him a break and an auditing job, trying to find out how someone on the trading floor is scamming money from the bank. He doesn't know it's happening for sure, but he strongly suspects, and Dave and his new partner, Susanna Cassuto, are the bloodhounds he sets on the trail. Can we say 'rebound relationship", kiddies? We certainly can! But there's something different about Susanna. And something very different about this scammer. Especially when, just when Dave and Susanna are on the brink of catching him, he turns up dead...
Kolman has a knack for explaining stuff and making the explanations work. I don't know how that happens, but it does. The amount that I know about stock options is nil, pretty much, but I know what one is, and the basics of trading them. So I'm not a complete amateur. And yet Kolman's explanations of the process didn't seem as if he were talking down to the reader, which is impressive. Even more impressive is that the explanatory sections of the book, which are often a pace-killer in the extreme, don't slow things down here at all. Part of the reason for this is, likely, that the book is slower-paced in general than your average thriller-- Kolman's wall street is not the adrenaline-fueled world of a Joe Finder novel. There's a mystery to be solved, that mystery gets more complex, and the book's pace matches Dave Ackerman's-- he's got no idea what he's doing in this world, save trying to make a paycheck and falling in love with Susanna Cassuto, and the book's pace matches Dave's-- hesitant and fumbling one minute, decisive (and headstrong) the next. That may sound like a criticism, It isn't meant as one. It's quite a performance on Kolman's part, and I find it impressive.
The one thing that bugged me is what I perceived as the book's attitude towards gay characters. Now, I rush to say I'm 99% sure that Kolman's take here is that the characters who dismiss the murder as a "gay crime" are buffoons, or at least well-meant folks who have their brains in the wrong place, and that Dave's sexual confusion as he gets farther into the case is meant to help us identify with him somewhat (at least, those of us who've been in that same confused state). Overall, I think the book is meant to be sympathetic, in some general sense, to its gay characters. Certainly, two of the most likable guys we meet in the book are gay. But there's still a kind of undercurrent that made me less than comfortable a time or two. And again I say, that may well have been meant-- we're supposed to be offended at the bullheaded police detective, whose aggressive dismissal of the case as a gay crime borders on the homophobic. But it just rubbed me the wrong way sporadically. Your mileage may (and I'm sure it will) vary.
That said, though, I sailed through this one in two days. It is readable, compelling, very well-plotted, and very good stuff. Recommended. ****
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Dave Ackerman, the narrator of "Naked Option", is a brilliant trader but one day, recklessly trying to one-up his firm's superstar, he goes naked on an option trade and loses $112 million in two hours. His career is over. Then he hears about an auditing job at an investment bank. He knows within minutes that something is very wrong, but he's so desperate, he takes the job. His new partner is Susanna Cassuto, an attractive young auditor he tags as a rich party girl. But on the couch with the lights off, she becomes something else - awkward and inexperienced. What is going on? Together, they discover the elegant embezzlement scheme going on: one trader is working inside with a partner outside. When somebody turns up dead, Dave and Susanna race to put the pieces together - but the bank drops the case. They're fired. Furious, Dave goes out on his own to find the killer. But the killer finds him first.
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