Shadow Account (Frey, Stephen) [Hardcover]

Stephen Frey (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 2, 2004 | Series: Frey, Stephen

His novels of big money and murder in the world of finance have earned New York Times bestselling author Stephen Frey a richly deserved reputation as a master of suspense who always delivers a high yield. Now he raises the stakes, and the risk factor, in a new thriller that pits a young Wall Street player against corporate conspiracy and White House intrigue—in a dangerous game of double crosses, dirty tricks, and deadly consequences.

An investment banker in the maverick firm Phenix Capital, Conner Ashby is doing all right for himself. At twenty-seven, he’s practically the right-hand man of the company’s founder—a wealthy old pro looking to make a big comeback on The Street while grooming Conner for a place at the top. Between his career and his gorgeous girlfriend, it’s a good life, with every indication of getting even better—until a wayward E-mail crosses Conner’s computer, and plunges his near-perfect world into a terrifying downward spiral.

“The ‘operation’ is way out of hand. If we don’t do something, it’s going to detonate.” It’s a communication not meant for Conner’s eyes, between people he doesn’t know, about a company he’s never heard of—a company that’s engaged in corporate fraud on a massive scale. With no way to trace the E-mail, it’s impossible for Conner to act on the volatile discovery. But with millions of dollars at stake, high-powered careers in the balance, and hell to pay if the truth comes out, whoever clicked the “send” button by mistake isn’t about to take any chances. And for Conner, the evening that began in the arms of a beautiful woman ends in a harrowing race for his life.

As he follows a twisting trail of misdeeds and misinformation that stretches nationwide, Conner slowly uncovers a shocking plot as undeniably real as the gunshot wound in his arm. Now, surviving will mean struggling to expose the truth as relentlessly as his shadowy enemies seek to conceal it— and fighting for his life as ruthlessly as those determined to end it.

At every unexpected turn, Shadow Account deftly reveals Stephen Frey’s many and considerable gifts: his genius for plotting, his mastery of suspense, and his unmatched insight into the dark territory where finance meets felony, money meets mortality, and profit and loss are matters of life and death.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Frey's latest pecuniary adventure follows his formula of extremely complicated plots spun around illegal, high-level financial shenanigans. He's used it with variations before (The Takeover; The Legacy; The Insider; etc.), and despite clunky writing, implausible situations, lucky coincidences and untied threads, it proves perfectly serviceable once again. Investment banker Conner Ashby is checking his e-mail while beautiful girlfriend Liz Shaw lounges nude on his bed when he accidentally intercepts an interoffice memo that refers to improprieties in an entity named Project Delphi. The wayward communication states that this company is engaged in rampant corporate fraud: "Big expense accounts, undocumented loans, and tons of in-the-money option grants. Plus, the senior guys are hiring executive assistants who look like centerfolds but can't spell their own names." Shortly after Conner receives the message, an intruder breaks into his apartment and starts shooting. Conner is out the window and on the run; Liz is dead. The plot encompasses a mysterious presidential chief of staff who is out to either save his boss or do him in, a secretary of the treasury who has cashed in big time on ill-gotten corporate shares, and quite a few women who either want to be Conner's girlfriend or want him dead. It's all very tangled, but Frey has the undeniable ability to explain complex financial transactions while at the same time providing plenty of action and nuggets of insider money lore. Those readers who like their financial fiction fast and furious will be perfectly happy as long as they don't pay too much attention to the details.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Conner Ashby took a job as an investment banker with Phenix Capital because its founder and president, the now elderly Gavin Smith, is a wonderful mentor and an up-by-his-own-bootstraps man, like Conner himself. So it's no surprise that Conner turns to Gavin for help after a series of events that seems to defy explanation. During a tryst with Liz, a wealthy heiress engaged to someone else, Conner hears a beep from his computer, signifying the arrival of e-mail. The message alludes to an apparent conspiracy to rip off investors with the bank. Later, returning home after running an errand, he finds his apartment ransacked, Liz dead, the intruder still on the premises. Conner evades the thug, summons the police, and returns to his apartment to find everything in pristine condition--including the spot where Liz's dead body once lay. Finding the connection between that e-mail message and the disappearance of Liz becomes Conner's obsession, despite Gavin's advice to forget the incident and move on. Staying true to the formula that has made his financial thrillers successful, Frey throws his financial-wizard hero into a situation in which he can trust no one and forces him to risk his life while uncovering a bizarre web of corruption and deceit. There are no real surprises here, but Frey does what he does skillfully, and he's found a large and receptive audience. Mary Frances Wilkens
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Ballantine Books; 1 edition (March 2, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0345457587
• ISBN-13: 978-0345457585
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,627,805 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Stephen Frey is a managing director at a private equity firm. He is the bestselling author of fourteen previous novels, including The Fourth Order, The Insider, and The Takeover. He lives in Florida.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars A very light yawner, May 21, 2006

By 

clifford "akitonmyers" (Portland, OR, United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Shadow Account (Frey, Stephen) (Hardcover)

This is not the worst book ever to grace the shelves of a library. Next time you enter one, take a look at the mystery/thriller section. I myself am an avid reader, perhaps 150 books a year. Most of them are in the mystery genre. Yet when confronted with a mystery section that has been compiling books for sixty years its hard to say that even 5% of the authors are familiar to me. Most of the books are covered with decades of dust and forgotten tombs of years gone by. That is the way 'Shadow Account' strikes me as being remembered in the years to come. It is a book you will find at the bottom of stacks in yard sales and church functions. This is not a book or an author whom like Chandler, Christie, or Hammett will be read far into the future.

The writing is plodding, sections of the novel are well done, but the tempo and style of these individual pieces clash with other sections so that you are left with a soup of mushy ideas. To put it another way, this book does not hold up well as a whole.

Another thing is the plot. Frey starts the story off with a brutal murder in young Conner Ashby's apartment. Conner is pulling down a couple of hundred G's a year so this is probably a posh place were talking about. He is having a daliance with a lady, leaves to hit up the local supermarket, spends a few minutes there, comes back, and she is dead. Conner had recieved an email a few moments before he left and it comes to his attention that the murder was done so that the evidence of the email could be covered up. OK, I can live with that. But the way Frey unfolds it all is so goofy that it pretty much destroys the rest of the book. Some CEO character sends out an email to Conner and with in 20 minutes he hires a hit man, sends him to Conners place, tears it apart, kills a girl, and then confronts our protagonist. Conner then chases the bad guy around NY for an hour, comes back to his place with some cops, and everything that was destroyed is put back into place without a sign of anything wrong happening. Whats up with that?

I am not giving away anything here. This occurs in the first few pages and sets up the rest of the book. Conner just had the lady he loves murdered in his place and then over the next few chapters he misses time from his insanely competitive job to have flirtatious hours long conversations and seems to have not been affected at all by the terrifying events. Repetedly in this book he is attacked and then a few pages later he is suave and making moves with young ladies.

This book is slow. This book goes into chapter long discources on the corruptability of fortune 500 companies. This book has long episodes of buildup that leads nowhere, not even as a diversionary plot thread.

All in all this is a trainwreck of a novel and I suggest that you leave it alone. I would point you towards 'Mystic River' by Lehane or 'Tell No One' by Coben for novels in this style that actually work.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Not Frey's best, July 1, 2005

By 

Robert M. Logan (Folsom, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Shadow Account (Frey, Stephen) (Hardcover)

Disappointing, but I read until the end and then laughed at myself for doing so. If you are reading this review to decide whether or not to read this book next - my recommendation is grab another book from your stacks.

The storyline is more fantasy (silly) with a splash of romance than thriller. It is unfortunate because the storyline could have been solid with a bit more focus and character development.

So many books and so little time - pass on this one unless you have a need to read every book Stephen Frey puts his name to.

Two ˝ stars.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Not at all what I was told it would be, February 10, 2011

By 

Kiki Lauren (Boston, MA, USA and London, UK) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Shadow Account (Frey, Stephen) (Kindle Edition)

I bought this because I told a friend about a great new international thriller I loved with an investment banker as one of the lead characters. She told me if I liked that I'd eat this up. I'm a financial professional, I'm home sick and read this in one day, and let me tell you, if I wasn't sick before I'd be now. In the first place, the setting and characterizations in the financial sector are not real or believable. Next, the story has events that are so hard to swallow (the guy's girlfriend is murdered in the first scenes, and he's romancing somebody else within a few chapters--offensive to me as a woman--this after uncovering major fraud involving his firm, then chasing the assassin around NYC, all within an hour) that you can't let yourself get drawn into the story. Finally (and I could keep going on, but I won't), the ending was not at all satisfying after all the convoluted sub-plots going on, and I didn't feel everything was satisfactorily resolved. Please don't bother with this one. On a sick day (or any day), if you want a well-spun, believable tale of a financial type caught up in events beyond his control, then has to rise to the occasion, read Trojan Horse. Or try an old classic like The Day Of The Jackal (I just read it).