The Vulture Fund [Paperback]

STEPHEN W. FREY (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1, 1996

Mace McLain, a young Wall Street investment banker, manages a daring new investment fund, the success of which means everything to the prestigious firm of Walker Pryce. Once he's on the inside, McLain finds a string of evidence pointing to a conspiracy involving politics and terrorism.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

More than one reviewer of his first novel (The Takeover) dubbed investment banker Frey the Grisham of financial thrillers. The comparison holds for Frey's second: the characters clatter like wooden puppets, and the prose wobbles between the serviceable and the silly, but the man can tell one exciting story nonetheless. Hotshot New York investment banker Mace McLain is recruited by his senior partner, Lewis Webster, to establish a $2 billion "vulture fund" that will buy great chunks of Manhattan properties in what Webster insists will be an inevitable real estate bust. Mace's immediate boss in the venture will be Kathleen (Leeny) Hunt, smart, beautiful and predatory. Meanwhile, the country's vice president, a Democrat, is locked in a fierce struggle with the CIA director, who's the presumptive GOP presidential nominee. Frey lets on that one of the two has suborned Webster and Leeny into working a scheme (involving professional terrorists and murder) that will shatter the New York real estate market and generate vast campaign funds. Most readers will easily figure out who Mr. Big is, but the fun here?and there's plenty of it?isn't in solving a mystery. It's in seeing a smart and tough minnow like Mace tossed into a shark tank and only to swim his way out, gills puffing and tail flashing. 150,000 first printing; major ad/promo; film rights optioned by Paramount and Neufeld/Rehme; author tour.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Frey's best-selling debut novel, The Takeover, was "a Grishamesque blend of skullduggery and intrigue" (LJ 6/15/95). Here, an investment banker uncovers a conspiracy between Washington politicos and terrorists.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: Michael Joseph Ltd (August 1, 1996)
• ISBN-10: 0718141792
• ISBN-13: 978-0718141790
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #9,102,728 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:

1.0 out of 5 stars Just plain bad, January 4, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Vulture Fund (Paperback)

Stephen Frey should go back to being an I-banker because he sure can't write. His writing makes Grisham look like Faulkner. The plot is not only bad, but stretches the limits of imagination and fictional generosity. The CIA is a spy organization. It does not train special counter-terrorist military units. That's what the Defense Department and the FBI does. Also, apparently the bad guys brought Mace (the protagonist) to run the vulture fund -- even though they know he's smart and could very well be a threat -- because they needed his contacts. This doesn't make any sense. Surely the head of the bank (who masterminded the illicit fund) would have had far more contacts in the financial world than a vice-president in his bank. The dialogue is no better than the plotting, and perhaps even worse. One would hard pressed to find a vice-president in a prestigious I-bank who talks like some inexperienced high school teenager when it comes to relationships with women. In sum, the book has all the signs of a bad writer: nonsensical plot, cardboard characters, banal dialogue, and badly researched facts. This is the second book I've read by Frey (the first being The Takeover, which was also a waste of paper), and I will never read him again. I've read all the authors in the new genre of "financial thrillers" (Frey, Michael Ridpath, Linda Davies), and they should all go back to banking. A message to John LeCarre: could you please write a spy novel involving banking world.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Cheesy. Yep, that about covers it. Cheesy., November 6, 2004

By 

DWD "DWD's Reviews" (Indianapolis, IN) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: The Vulture Fund (Paperback)

Cardboard characters.
Cheesy plot.
Little or no basis in reality - like how would the CIA director (yet he's called "General" even though he's the Director of the CIA) who wants to run for President explain the hundreds of millions of dollars he wants to use for his campaign that he skimmed from his evil plan?

This book is a little Iran-Contra, a little Trading Places and a lot of silly garbage all rolled into one.

And - to make it all the worse, I heard it as a book on tape and the reader made nearly EVERY male bad guy voice the same - a raspy, impatient tone. Kind of like James Garner with a sore throat.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Sloppy writing spoils a promising premise., May 1, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: The Vulture Fund (Paperback)

I appreciate good suspense fiction, and this is not it! The book starts out with a fine premise but less than laudable prose. And the writing style only deteriorates. The last third reads like a hastily composed first draft--a barely fleshed-out outline. I couldn't help but conclude that Frey was in a big hurry to get this one into print, and so was his publisher, because no one polished or edited it. If I read one more time that someone's hand was "large" or "huge," or that someone "hesitated for several moments," I was going to recycle my copy. I don't care how successful Frey is, he should be embarrassed by the quality of the writing he turned in here. It shows a lack of respect for his craft and his readers.