A Fatal Debt

May 7, 2012
Financial journalist Gapper (All That Glitters: The Fall of Barings, with Nick Denton) charts a Wall Street CEO’s fall from grace in his earnest if uneven first novel. Ben Cowper, a psychiatrist at New York’s Episcopal Hospital, is dismayed to learn from the TV news that banker Harry Shapiro, an emergency admission Cowper examined and released, has killed himself at his East Hampton beach house. In fact, Shapiro, though quite depressed at recently losing his job, is alive, though he’s far from well, since the body at Shapiro’s house turns out to be his former partner, Marcus Greene, with whose murder he’s charged. Cowper’s profession is on the line—the hospital wants a sacrificial lamb—which leads the somewhat hapless Cowper to investigate the murder himself. Solid prose and a strong cast compensate only in part for a contrived plot with too much of Cowper’s backstory and not nearly enough suspense. Readers will find it hard to feel much more than pity for the clueless Cowper. Agent: David Kuhn, Kuhn Projects.

February 1, 2012

Psychiatrist Ben Cowper reluctantly agrees to treat a disgraced Wall Street biggie at home instead of at the hospital, then rushes to pick up the pieces when someone ends up dead. Gapper is a fiction newcomer but no neophyte; as chief business columnist of the Financial Times, he's already a high-profile writer with a big blog/Twitter following. Another in the huge upsweep of financial thrillers, inspired by these parlous times.

Copyright 2012 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

June 1, 2012
With doctor-patient confidentiality shielding testimony, psychiatrist Ben Cowper becomes a pawn in a murder fueled by Wall Streetmeltdown machinations. Cowper is on duty at Manhattan's Episcopal Hospital when financial czar Harry Shapiro comes in, depressed and possibly suicidal, shortly after being booted from his job as CEO of a Wall Street bank bleeding billions. Pressured by Episcopal's president to release Shapiro, a major hospital benefactor, Cowper is left feeling guilty and potentially liable when, soon after, Shapiro kills his former partner, Marcus Greene. Called before a grand jury, Cowper sets out to defend himself, even as he's assaulted, his apartment is ransacked, and he's newly infatuated with Shapiro employee Anna Amundsen. Business journalist Gapper deals capably with the Wall Street collapse in his fiction debut, but his protagonist and narrator defies belief for his naivete and foolhardiness as he uncovers a web of deceit and betrayal in financial transactions. Still, this is an intriguing premise taken to a suspenseful conclusion.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)