Bottom Line

As the US and global economies headed toward a major recession in the second year of the 21st Century, companies worldwide struggled to survive.

Two strong businessmen who run a colossal international management consulting-accounting firm battle against one another to save the firm for which they both work, each with a different, conflicting method to rescue the company.

One is the CEO and founder, the other is the senior-most executive who expects to succeed as head of the company. The CEO is an amoral, ruthless, megalomaniac; the other partner is a principled, but flawed idealist. Once they were as close as father and son, the older man mentor to the younger. Now their relationship collapses along with the economy as their on-going conflict escalates as the firm loses, one after another, its once-blue-chip corporate clients.

A series of financial crimes ensue, instigated by the CEO - fraudulent accounting to help clients seemingly make their estimated profits; insider trading by the avaricious CEO, to help him reap millions in personal profits. With his company near collapse, the CEO absconds with millions of dollars held in trust in a partners' bonus pool. The protagonist of the novel then begins hunting him down, using the methods of a private eye.