Clawback

"If I had one, my logo might be a green eyeshade crossed by a nine-mil," muses Silas Cade, the protagonist of Mike Cooper's action-packed thriller CLAWBACK. Silas, a black ops vet and independently contracted consultant, is no stranger to either gun-slinging or to shady finance. After a stint in Iraq, he undergoes the typical post-tour Blackwater gig to strike out on his own, and quickly becomes the go-to man for hedge fund managers and investors who need things done quickly, quietly, and by any means necessary. As CLAWBACK opens he's finishing with his last job, and discarding all the accoutrements of the identity he built to go with it.

The mission began innocently enough (as innocently as vigilante financial justice usually does)-contracted by a hedge fund manager to pay a visit to an investor, Silas's job is to demand clawback from his target (a form of sanctioned payback deployed by powerful corporations). But then the hedge fund manager who ordered the job turns up dead, and it quickly becomes clear that this is not the murderer's first kill. Silas-with the aid of a young, beautiful investigative journalist named Clara Dawson-quickly learns that someone is killing off greedy investment bankers all over the city. His next assignment? Figure out who's killing the bankers-and try to stop them.

There's no shortage of suspects, and he can't seem to figure out whether it's an inside job or a victim of just-legal financial shenanigans taking justice into their own hands. Meanwhile, amped-up, newly-armed bankers across New York begin bringing glocks to the trading floor, convinced that a Marxist conspiracy is brewing a plot to make them pay for their role in the crash of 2008. Even more curious, someone on the street is trading off the killings for profit just a little too close on the heels of his colleagues' demises.

A break-neck, action packed thriller told in Silas's wry, brash, and world-weary voice, CLAWBACK will hook readers still clamoring for tales of the Wall Street underbelly told in the voice of a master novelist.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mike Cooper is the pseudonym of a former jack-of-all-trades. Under a different name his work has received wide recognition, including a Shamus Award, a Thriller nomination, and inclusion in The Best American Mystery Stories 2010.