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Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
Just in time for the dot-com meltdown, Lee Gruenfeld shows off his considerable knowledge of the New Economy in The Street, a novel that tries hard to turn the ups and downs of the IPO market into the stuff of thriller fiction--and almost succeeds. James Vincent Hanley is a wage slave on Wall Street who decides to turn his insider knowledge into a start-up. Armed with a brilliant business plan and little else, Hanley bamboozles enough big-business types who ought to know better into backing Artemis-5, which he bills as the next new thing. His high-powered board and the money-crazed denizens of Wall Street are convinced that a company with no products, no services, and no expectation of profits is the smartest idea since sliced bread.
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Just in time for the dot-com meltdown, Lee Gruenfeld shows off his considerable knowledge of the New Economy in The Street, a novel that tries hard to turn the ups and downs of the IPO market into the stuff of thriller fiction--and almost succeeds. James Vincent Hanley is a wage slave on Wall Street who decides to turn his insider knowledge into a start-up. Armed with a brilliant business plan and little else, Hanley bamboozles enough big-business types who ought to know better into backing Artemis-5, which he bills as the next new thing. His high-powered board and the money-crazed denizens of Wall Street are convinced that a company with no products, no services, and no expectation of profits is the smartest idea since sliced bread.
At first, the unlikely new company is more successful than Hanley ever dreamed. The money's rolling in, and Hanley is well on his way to winning a huge pot in the stock market poker game. Then an SEC enforcer named Thurgren starts sniffing around Artemis-5, and the whole enterprise threatens to collapse. Like Hanley, Thurgren has a mole on the inside of his opponent's operation--and thereby hangs the tale.
The Street, while intermittently entertaining and a good introduction to New Economics 101, is plagued by improbable scenarios and a paucity of character development. Gruenfeld can't seem to decide whether he's writing satire or suspense. The entire charade will make sense only to those who believe that the stock market operates according to rational principles and that there is such a thing as a free lunch. --Jane Adams
From Publishers Weekly
Gruenfeld's latest thriller (after The Expert) reads like weak Grisham: good old boys slaving away, trying to nail millionaires who are ripping off the American public. Only now it's the Information Age, and the good guys are chewing nicotine gum instead of smoking cigarettes, and their enemies aren't old school financial corporations, but startups with no tangible products. Despite lengthy legal and financial descriptions, the story is relatively simple: James Hanley has started a company (Artemis-5.com) and attracts some of the nation's most influential investors to sign on to his endeavor. Anticipation builds, and although the investors don't really know what it is they've bought into, the company's launch is one of the most talked about in Internet history mainly because of the high-profile names and the secrecy surrounding it. SEC enforcement officer Jubal Thurgren smells a rat, though, and the bulk of the book plays out the high-stakes investigation Thurgren mounts in an attempt to nab Hanley, who seems to know the SEC's charges aren't unfounded yet insists on dodging rules. Gruenfeld offers some classic thriller sequences, with car chases and shootings, but most of the pages are taken up by windy conversations. His reportorial style is heavy on phrases like "prospective competitive reflex," although he gives understandable definitions of terms such as "IPO" for those who don't read the Industry Standard. This commentary on the crazed world of new technology lacks originality, but will interest those who read market charts the way others read sports scores. (Mar.)Forecast: What an odd collection of blurbs decorate the dust jacket of this book. There are raves from Nelson DeMille, Stephen Frey and Christopher Reich, but also from profs at Harvard Business School and a law school, and one from an investment banker. The financial crowd is Gruenfeld's obvious market, and they'll make the book a hit, but more generic thriller readers won't flock to this title.
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
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