Clawback

Author: Mike Cooper

Goodreads Rating: 4.00

My Rating: 2.5 Stars

Pages: 380

I won this book as part of Goodreads Firstreads program. I liked the idea of the thriller side of it - hedge fund managers being gunned down. (Not that I thought that killing Hedge Fund managers is a good idea.) But I enjoy thrillers, and anticipated this one was going to be a good one. 

Goodreads Synopses:

After a stint in the Middle East, black ops vet Silas Cade becomes an "accountant"-the go-to for financiers who need things done quickly, quietly, and by any means necessary. Silas is hired by a major player to pay a visit to a hedge fund manager to demand clawback: the mandatory return of compensation paid on a deal that goes bad. But before Cade can tell his client that he got his ten million back, the guy turns up dead.

And he's not the first. Someone's killing investment bankers whose funds have gone south. Silas's scrubbed identity, and his insider's perspective, makes him the ideal shadow man to track down whoever's murdering some of the most hated managers on Wall Street. With the aid of a beautiful financial blogger looking to break her first big story, Silas tracks a violent security crew who may be the key to the executions. But as paranoia and panic spread, he begins to wonder: is the threat coming from inside the game-or out?

With breakneck pacing, nonstop action, and cutting edge details of today's financial intelligence technology, Clawback hurtles to its final twist, a gripping contemporary tale of shady finance, venal corruption, and greed run rampant.

My review after the Jump!

There were only a few good things about this book I am sad to say. On goodreads.com, since they do not have half star ratings, I gave it three stars because it was an okay book. I really liked the idea of the plot, but the follow through was not there. It was a really quick read which made it a lot easier to get through, but I did have a lot of problems that brought the rating down.

For starters, the book included A LOT of financial jargon that went over my head, I have to say he did a good job of trying to explain it, but it was hard to grasp. You also need to have an understanding of how the market works and what influences the market. None of which I understand.

I also felt that the relationship between Silas Cade and Clara felt so forced at first, and I'm not sure it got any better by the end of the book. He explains how there is this attraction between them, but you don't really see anything until they crash into each other kissing. You could see that they cared for each other but it never felt natural. It also felt like some of the fighting scenes were unnatural as well, such as when he would get edgy and karate chop someone for startling him. - Real black ops guys don't get startled.

One thing that was a huge bother was the fact that Silas' brother was introduced via letter very early on in the book, and then there was no resolution- he's mentioned maybe twice more to his friends - a document forger and a trader- and then thats it. Nothing more is said about him, and if he was introduced with the intention of this becoming a series, then maybe he could have been saved for another book because he did nothing to further the plot. 

I think this book would be good for someone who has a good understanding of finance or someone who can see past all of those aspects of the book and enjoy it for being the thriller it is.