Both a penetrating look at today's business world and a devastating assessment of corporate greed, The Dinosaur Club is a compelling novel and a hilarious page-turner. Within days, Jack Fallon learns that his wife of twenty-four years is dumping him and that the only company he's ever worked for is about to do the same. The head honchos at Waters Cable have decided to implement a "workforce imbalance correction, " which includes canning Jack and his coworkers, all of whom are in the 50/50 class - at least fifty years old and making $50,000 or more. As the head of sales, Fallon oversees an unlikely band of overweight, middle-aged executives, all terrified that the lives they struggled to build are about to be destroyed. But instead of accepting their fate, Fallon and the other "dinosaurs" join forces and fight back. Dubbing themselves "The Dinosaur Club, " Fallon and his cohorts vow to defy managements intent to drive them out. Through a series of clandestine maneuvers, corporate intrigue, and good old-fashioned office politics, the Dinosaur Club begins to turn the tables. Fallon's secret weapon is the beautiful young attorney Samantha Moore, who works for the opposition but also happens to be falling in love with him. Together they take direct aim at the company and at the Young Turks who run it - the "bright young men" who would send all the so-called dinosaurs to the financial trash heap.
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Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
This hilarious novel of corporate guerrilla warfare takes you right into the belly of the beast. When the rising young generation of officers at the Waters Cable Corporation shift into hyper-greed mode, they target for early retirement all the middle and upper level executives who had the bad taste to reach age 50 and make a decent salary. But Jack Fallon isn't going to take it: he organizes his paunchy coevals to resist and they fight to keep their jobs and take back control of their destinies. More than a comic excursion, though, The Dinosaur Club is a novel for our time, a well-observed drama of late-20th century capitalism in America.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Library Journal
At age 49, Jack Fallon discovers that his life is plummeting out of control. In one fell swoop, his wife leaves him and corporate downsizing threatens his livelihood. Always the warrior, Jack organizes other fiftyish management employees to fight their ruthless corporate leaders, and the "Dinosaur Club" is born. Working against formidable odds, the Dinosaurs engage in hilarious hijinks and serious espionage to foil their chief executives. What Jack does not count on is falling in love with Samantha Moore, legal counsel for the corporation. Torn between assisting the Dinosaurs and representing the corporation, Samantha finds her code of ethics challenged. An Edgar Award winner (Tarnished Blue, Dutton, 1995) and seasoned author of grittier works, Heffernan is masterly in examining the scruples of corporate downsizing with a discerning eye and blends levity in his cauldron of good and evil. Highly recommended for public libraries.
-?Mary Ellen Elsbernd, Northern Kentucky Univ. Lib., Highland Hts.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
-?Mary Ellen Elsbernd, Northern Kentucky Univ. Lib., Highland Hts.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Corporate intrigue and plotting too real for fiction,
By cmuhle@earthlink.net (Anaheim CA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Dinosaur Club (Mass Market Paperback)
There is no easy way to resize a company and many execs take the easy way by combining the need with greed. The affected are helpless unless they reach into their guts to find determination, courage, craftyness and imagination. When Jack Fallon's life falls apart at both ends of his commute, he finds the craftyness and courage to confront his probelms with work and wife. Anyone ever confronted with either can relate to what happens as Fallon leads his co-workers and himself out of desperation but it ain't easy to fight executive and wifely greed at the same time. I've worked for thirteen companies at the executive level, in marketing and with legal staff and I can't believe Heffernan hasn't also - that's how real his stuff is as he touches all the bases of divorce, its impact on the kids, a new love, being over fifty in the workplace, shallow management, aging parents, product defects and insider manipulation. Can Fallon cope with all this? I read The Dinosaur Club in one saession to find out...and so will you.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Male fantasy disappoints,
By A Customer
This review is from: The Dinosaur Club: A Novel (Hardcover)
The premise got me interested in this book -- an executive leads a group of his employees in thwarting the corporation's plan to push them out one way or another. In the first chapters, I realized this was a true male fantasy -- middle-age protagonist and Vietnam war hero can still lead others, take on the organization, and win the sexy brainy young colleague. Nothing wrong with a good fantasy -- if it's well-written. This one is cliched writing throughout, and the convenient plot details make it too farfetched (this sort of fantasy needs the element of possibility.) I kept reading only to see how the plot plays out (unbelievably). The best part, and also the truest, was the depiction of the corporate executive being humiliated by the company in order to encourage resignations from the group targeted to be downsized. Also good, and original, was the hilarious chapter in which we learn the strategy that the protagonist's mother uses to insure she won't be "downsized" from the retirement home for lack of funds. If only the rest of the story had had this ingenuity. Not the story I hoped it would be.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Reviews by Nan Kilar and Bobby Miller,
This review is from: The Dinosaur Club (Mass Market Paperback)
Little did I know this would be a good diversion from my usual mystery stories. This is about corporate America from which I happily retired over five years ago.
Jack Fallon's wife of twenty-four years is divorcing him, and his employer, Waters Cable, is trying to rid the payroll of the `older', high salaried employees. Charlie Waters hired Jack when the company was just starting up; Charlie is still the CEO and Chairman and has pretty much forgotten Jack's efforts the past twenty-some years. Carter Bennett (born to wealth and snobbery) is the CFO and a smarmy, self-righteous prick who Charlie has hired to get rid of the alleged dead weight, while covering up the blatant age discrimination as best he can. Jack's entire marketing division has been targeted, so his band of not-so-merry cohorts form The Dinosaur Club and put up a fight to expose Charlie and Carter's ulterior motives. This book was written in 1997 when `workforce imbalance corrections' (a/k/a downsizing) was one of the many corporate games played. The tactics used by management are somewhat true and the targeted employees' reactions are real. If you've ever worked in a large corporation, you'll get a kick out of this story.
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