None of Your Business [Paperback]

Valerie Block (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1, 2004

When celebrity tax accountant Mitch Greiff disappears with millions, Detective Dennis Sprague of the NYPD’s Computer Crimes Squad is assigned the baffling case. Why would a man who’s had all the breaks in life suddenly go on the lam? Who wakes up, looks around his spacious Upper East Side co-op, gazes at his former-model wife, and says, “The hell with this—I want to live in fear!”
Sprague’s investigation leads to Erica King, Mitch’s indispensable “loophole rabbi.” What Erica lacks in social graces, she makes up for in financial acumen. Curiosity piqued, Sprague suspects there’s more to Erica than the plainest Jane in Manhattan.
From the living rooms of Park Avenue to the Pastrami King on Queens Boulevard, Valerie Block turns a sharp eye on New York in this sophisticated cocktail of bad manners and criminal behavior. None of Your Business has something for everyone: high-tech embezzlement, petty office politics, emotionally demanding strangers, overworked cops, identity theft, and bad attitude.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

As Block demonstrated in Was It Something I Said?, she has Richard Condon's manic energy and the here-and-now vocabulary of this week's Time Out New York. Oh, and she has the police procedural thing down pat. Best of all, she has a comic streak that's ruthless yet weirdly compassionate, because it's truly character-driven. Take Erica King, the mastermind behind a plot that involves the computerized theft of millions. To her self-absorbed colleagues at the accounting firm, she's a dowdy, bitchy workaholic spinster whose dull life can only be improved by hearing about their menstrual cramps and getting advice on updating her hairstyle. But in several separate incarnations-as Heidi, Maria and Marjorie-she has different wardrobes, addresses, computers and psyches, not to mention illicit megabucks stashed offshore. Although the old-fashioned hairdo turns out to be a wig covering baldness dating to childhood, it's somehow no surprise that she lures her boss, tycoon Mitch Greiff, away from his former model wife, Patricia, who was always bothering him to put on sunblock and make nice to their new best friends. Just to even the score, Patricia seduces Det. Anthony Ballestrino, in charge of figuring out what happened to a great deal of money supposedly being managed by Mitch Greiff's firm. With its cast of dozens, all fully realized, the novel is occasionally dizzying but always diverting.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist

Block follows up her comic romance Was It Something I Said? (1998) with an unusual and hilarious take on the police procedural. Two partners in the NYPD's Computer Crimes Squad are working to track down an accountant suspected of embezzling millions of dollars. The suspect's assistant, Erica, is a frumpy and seemingly forgettable woman with a talent for telling people what she thinks of them in no uncertain terms. But is she telling the whole truth about her boss? All is eventually revealed, from Erica's life story and surprising hidden depths to the missing accountant's none-too-idyllic secret existence, the trials of the irritated wife he left behind, and the two detectives' private struggles with marriage, dating, dieting, and nagging mothers. No one is immune to scrutiny in this sprawling, entertaining novel full of eccentric New Yorkers whose lives are not proceeding quite as they had planned. Carrie Bissey
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Ballantine Books (June 1, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0345463994
• ISBN-13: 978-0345463999
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.3 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,794,276 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Smart, Funny, Worth It, July 29, 2003

By 

Steven Schwartz (Glencoe, IL USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: None of Your Business (Hardcover)

A fun fast read that I could not put down. A computer mystery with odd, well developed charachters, witty writing and a compelling plot. A great book and this will be a great movie.

(I agree with the reviewer that says the cover doesn't make any sense)...Buy it anyway.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fantastic, August 25, 2003

By 

Jennifer (Los Angeles, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: None of Your Business (Hardcover)

My God, I didn't want this book to end. The best I've read all year. There are several synopses on the page already so I'll skip that. "None of Your Business" was extremely funny, clever, well-written and enthralling. I waited a long time after Ms. Block's first book for her follow-up, and she certainly did not disappoint. Should be on the best seller list.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A cyberworld police procedural, July 21, 2003

By 

Dr Cathy Goodwin (Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: None of Your Business (Hardcover)

Mitch Greiff, described as a "celebrity tax accountant," fumbles through life while women take care of him. There's his beautiful wife Patricia, a former model; Heather, a reasonably attractive junior manager and one-time romantic interest; and Erica, the only person in the office who actually reads the daily tax report from cover to cover every day.

Erica, the strongest, wields the most influence. A brusque, unattractive woman, she nevertheless wins Mitch with her intelligence and attention to detail. Although she's direct to the point of rudeness, I admire her style. "I won't bond with you," she says to a total stranger who begins sharing PMS stories in a hallway.

At the same time, I think the book could be at least fifty pages shorter. Multiple viewpoints don't bother me -- but we learn far too much about everyone's personal and past life, in excruciating detail. Patricia and Mitch have two sons who are unattractive in uninteresting ways. One of the cops has an animal-loving wife; the other seeks romance while living with his mother. Enough, already!

Although the book gets shelved with mysteries, it's really more of a car chase, with computers instead of cars. I didn't really understand why Mitch was so eager to follow Erica's lead. True, he was getting bored with his life, but he had more than enough resources to move. He became more and more passive as the book wore on.

Nor did I really see what Erica wanted or why she needed Mitch. Granted, he was a good lover who accepted her unique physical quirks, but she was perfectly capable of starting a new life on her own.

Then again, perhaps the book ultimately is about being unappreciated in one's world. Erica is vastly overqualified for her job and Mitch's partners urge him to find a more attractive junior manager. Patricia's beauty and competence are unappreciated, at least by her husband. Tony, one of the cops, has a last straw moment when cops take credit for his success.

There's also a subtheme of being put upon. Both Patricia and Erica find themselves responding to rude comments from strangers. They're asked about their religion, health, pregnancy and more -- and they feel these questions as intrusions.

It's so easy to create multiple identities in yahoo and hotmail -- why didn't she? By the end of the book I was rooting for her.