Trojan Horse (Sasha Del Mira) [Kindle Edition]

David Lender (Author)

Book Description

Daniel Youngblood is a world-weary oil and gas investment banker who's ready to hit the beach, when he's hired by a Saudi Prince for an OPEC deal where he can net himself $25 million as a swan song. At the same time, he meets and falls in love with Lydia, an exotic European fashion photographer, who he later discovers is really CIA-trained spy with a shocking past with the Saudi Prince. She convinces Daniel to enlist in what becomes a race for the lovers to stop a Muslim terrorist internet plot to bring down the Saudi royal family and cripple the world's oil capacity, all before they wind up dead.

Excerpts from Bull Street, The Gravy Train and Vaccine Nation, David Lender's other thrillers, follow the text of Trojan Horse.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

A Q&A with David Lender

Question: Trojan Horse opens with an assassination, then skips through time and around the world. How did the story develop?
 
David Lender: One night I had a long dream about an aging investment banker who meets an exotic, black-haired woman, falls in love with her, then learns she’s a spy. Then it wound through a long backstory on the woman, including that she grew up on an ashram in India. I made some notes. A few months later, I met an Asian beauty with long black hair who had lived on an ashram for 10 years (I later married her). I pulled out my notes--and Sasha, the heroine of Trojan Horse, was born.

Q: The book deals with political and financial issues spanning the globe, yet there is a strong sense of each individual place. Did you intend for the locations in the book to become characters?

DL: When I started Trojan Horse, I was in the midst of my investment banking career, doing big international mergers and acquisitions deals. As I flew around the world, I read high-concept thrillers set in exotic cities like Paris, Geneva, and Nice. The places I visited--their sounds, scents, ambience, and beauty--were burned into my psyche, and therefore made their way into the novel.

Q: You worked on Wall Street for 25 years. What made you decide to start writing?

DL: I always wanted to be a novelist. I made up my mind to do it about 15 years ago, when my investment banking career was in full swing. I just muscled it into my schedule, getting up at 5 a.m., writing for an hour, and then going to my day job, like most aspiring writers. I outlined or edited scenes on planes, in cabs, or in hotel rooms. I write because I love it, but also because I got to the point where I could no longer ignore the compulsion to do so.

Q: You must draw a lot of inspiration from your time on Wall Street. Where else do you find inspiration?

DL: Sometimes it’s someone in my life. Dani North, the protagonist of Vaccine Nation, was inspired by my fiancée, Manette. Elmore Leonard is one of my favorite authors, and reading his stuff frequently gives me ideas. Sometimes it’s just throwing ideas around with friends.

Q: What kind of books do you read, and which authors have influenced you?

DL: Thrillers. What else? Thriller writers who have influenced me include Elmore Leonard, Graham Greene, Frederick Forsyth, John le Carré, John Grisham (although I don’t think he’s ever gotten close to The Firm again), Robert Ludlum, Ken Follett, and Thomas Harris.

Q: Which books do you read over and over again?

DL: I think F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is the great American novel. I read it every year or so. Out of Sight is Elmore Leonard's best, with Get Shorty a close second. Nobody does dialogue or backstory like him. I’ll also never stop returning to Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, Forsythe’s The Day of the Jackal (it may be the best thriller ever written), le Carré’s Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and Smiley’s People, and Graham Greene’s Our Man in Havana.

---

Review

"The Grisham of Wall Street." - Bloomberg TV

"Wall Street bona fides and a flair for zippy narrative." - The New York Times

"It is simply spellbinding." - Midwest Book Review

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• File Size: 644 KB
• Print Length: 519 pages
• Page Numbers Source ISBN: 1612182283
• Publisher: Thomas & Mercer (November 22, 2011)
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
• Language: English
• ASIN: B005WWC62G
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• X-Ray: Enabled
• Lending: Enabled
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #13,078 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
  • #97 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Genre Fiction > Mystery & Thrillers > Thrillers > Legal

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

157 of 159 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A Grand Scale Thriller with Heart (and Soul) January 19, 2011

By Sparrow

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

I found Trojan Horse through Lender's author website (www.davidlender.net) and was drawn to it because he touted it as a love story enclosed in an international thriller. I got all that I asked for.

Though not a diehard thriller reader, I was immediately engrossed by the action in the Prologue, and intrigued by its events and what they might forebode. The plot then gets set in place step by step--Daniel, an oil & gas investment banker par excellence, the novel's hero, who is driven by his need to end his pain over the recent loss of his wife, his eagerness to recapture the excitement in his work again (including his excitement over a potential new assignment for the Saudis) AND his yearning to find someone to share it with again to make it worthwhile. Then Yassar, a Saudi prince, the Saudi Finance Minister and a member of the royal family, whose son was murdered by Sasha, the son's concubine (in the Prologue) and his continued anquish (20 years later) over his son's death, and his plans to end his torment over his failure to diversify Saudi Arabia's economy away from solely oil revenues by hiring a new team of advisors (Daniel at the top of the list). Next, the Shiite fanatic, Sheik bin-Abdur, who plans a terrorist jihad to topple the Saudi royal family and in the process cripple the world's oil capacity via internet hacking and sabotage. Finally, Lydia, the mysterious, beautiful woman Daniel falls for, who then sucks him into the cauldron of what's brewing with the other main characters.

And that's only the set-up. Later you meet Sasha and learn of her early years and how her background gets her wrapped up in this whole mess, then Tom, the CIA section head who recruited Sasha years ago as a spy inside the Saudi royal palace for the US, and got her involved in the murder of Yassar's son. Then fast-forward to today when they surface in Daniel's, Yassar's, the Sheik's (and his henchmen's) and Lydia's lives.

This is a big, sweeping book, with lots of action and passion spread out all over the world. It has big stakes, but also emotionally involving characters you care about. Don't plan any appointments for after you've gotten to the last half of the novel; you won't keep them.

71 of 73 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Normally I only give my husband 5 stars . . . January 27, 2011

By Mary Claire

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

....but this novel is an intricate piece of work, so it makes the grade. I loved this book. It starts off with a bang, the assassination 20 years ago of a Saudi prince, followed by his father's sworn oath to track down the killers, including Sasha, the young prince's concubine. Then a new group of characters and motives are introduced, some confusing at first, but all to be explained later as the author weaves it together. This includes flashbacks into the life of the concubine, which are fascinating but at first don't seem to tie to the story at hand. Read on. Again the author ties it into a more complex departure for the plot. Then the final push in the last half of the book, where I read it in one gasp, turning pages as fast as I could. Gripping, surprising and enjoyable.

55 of 57 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Scarily realistic; has you believing it. February 7, 2011

By Howard Dotson

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

This is one of the most creative and ominously realistic terrorist schemes I've heard of. Imagine designing Trojan horse computer programs to infiltrate the oil industry's computer systems that run all its operations. Everything from drilling rigs to pumping wells to well recovery systems to pipelines to refineries. Then imagine an Islamic fundamentalist wacko who thinks he's the instrument of Allah willing to unleash them. Then at the scheduled time, the Trojan horses drop their software code bombs to make everything go haywire and explode. It makes a freaky read, because it's so well done you believe it could be happening.

More About the Author

David Lender writes thrillers set in the financial sector based on his over 25-year career as a Wall Street investment banker. He draws on an insider's knowledge from his career in mergers and acquisitions with Merrill Lynch, Rothschild and Bank of America for the international settings, obsessively driven personalities and real-world financial intrigues of his novels. His characters range from David Baldacci-like corporate power brokers to Elmore Leonard-esque misfits and scam artists. His plots reveal the egos and ruthlessness that motivate the players in the business world, as well as the inner workings of the most powerful of our financial institutions and corporations.

David began writing novels over ten years ago. At one point a friend sent his first novel to a prominent New York literary agent, whose reaction was, "Not bad for somebody who doesn't know what he's doing yet." She introduced David to a seasoned thriller editor and publisher who had edited Robert Ludlum's first nine thrillers; David spent the next 18 months working with him to learn his craft.

More background on David and his writing can be found at www.davidlender.net.