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Executive Times |
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2007 Book Reviews |
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Killer
Instinct by Joseph Finder |
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Rating: |
*** |
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(Recommended) |
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Click on
title or picture to buy from amazon.com |
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Cheating I don’t know
if there’s a genre for business thrillers, but if there is, Joseph Finder
deserves a place of prominence in it. His latest offering, Killer
Instinct, presents an ensemble of cheaters, doing whatever it takes to
beat the competition. No matter how improbable this will be for most readers,
there is enough about workplace dynamics that makes Killer
Instinct readable. Here’s an excerpt, all of Chapter 8, pp. 55-60,
narrated by protagonist salesman Jason Steadman: The alarm went off at 5:00 a.m., two
hours earlier than usual, Kate groaned and rolled over,
put a pillow over her head. I got up as quietly as I could, went downstairs,
and made the coffee, and while it was brewing I took a quick shower. I wanted
to get into the office a good hour before my interview with Gordy so I could go over my accounts and get all the
numbers in order. When I got out of the shower, I saw the
light in the bedroom was on, Kate was downstairs at the kitchen
table in her pink bathrobe, drinking coffee. “You’re up early,” she said, I gave her
a kiss, “You too, Sorry if I woke you.” “You were out late.” “The softball game, remember?” “You went out for drinks afterward?” “Yeah.” “Drown your sorrows?” “We won, believe it or not.” “Hey,
that’s a first.” “Yeah, well, that guy Kurt played for
us. He blew everyone away.” “Kurt?” “The tow
truck driver.” “Huh?” “Remember, I told you
about this guy who gave me a ride home after the Acura wiped out?” It wiped
out by itself. I had nothing to do with it, see. “Navy SEALs.” “Special
Forces, but yeah. That guy. He’s, like, the real thing. He’s everything Gordy and all these other phony tough guys pretend to be. Sitting in their Aeron chairs and talking about ‘dog eat dog’ and ‘killing
the competition? Only he’s for real. He’s actually killed people.” I realized
I was telling her everything except the one thing I was most anxious about:
my interview with Gordy in a couple of hours. I
wasn’t sure I wanted to tell her. She’d probably just make me more nervous. “Don’t
forget, Craig and Susie are going to be here in time
for supper tonight.” “It’s
tonight?” “I’ve only
told you a thousand times.” I let out
a half groan, half sigh. “How long are they staying?” “Just two
nights.” “Why?” “Why what?
Why just two nights?” “Why are
they coming to “He was just elected to the
Harvard Board of Overseers, and his first meeting is tomorrow.” “How could
he be on the Harvard Board of Overseers? He’s a “He’s not
only a prominent alum but also a major contributor.
People care about things like that.” When Susie
met Craig, he was just a poor starving writer. He’d had a couple of stories
published in magazines with names like Tn Quarterly and Ploughshares,
and he taught expository writing at Harvard. He was kind of snooty, and
Susie probably liked that, but she sure as hell wasn’t going to live in
genteel poverty, and I think he figured out pretty quickly that he was never
going to make it in the literature business, So they moved out to Now he and
Susie vacationed on St. Barths with Brad and
Angelina, and Susie regularly fed Katie gossip about which movie stars were
secretly gay and which ones were in rehab. They had a big house in Holmby Hills and were always out to dinner with all the
celebrities. And he never let me forget it. She got up
and poured herself another cup of coffee. “Susie’s going to take Ethan around
“She
doesn’t get it, does she? Ethan’s not into Paul Revere. Maybe the “All I ask
is for you to be nice to them. You and Ethan have some sort of great
chemistry, which I don’t quite understand, But I appreciate it.” “How come
they’re staying here anyway?” I said. “Because
she’s my sister,” “You know
they’re just going to complain the whole time about the bathroom and the
shower curtain and how the water from the shower spills out on the floor, and
how we have the wrong coffeemaker and how come we don’t have any Peet’s “You can’t
hold it against them, Jason. They’re just accustomed to a higher standard of
living.” “Then
maybe they should stay at the Four Seasons.” “They want
to stay with us,” she said firmly. “I guess
Craig needs to stay in touch with the little people every once in a while.” “Very
funny.” I went to
the cereal cabinet and surveyed its depressing, low-cal, high-fiber contents.
Fiber One and Kashi Go Lean and several other
grim-looking boxes of twigs and burlap strips. “Hey, honey?” I said, my back turned. “You’ve been looking at real
estate?” “What are
you talking about?” “On the
computer. I noticed you were looking at some real estate website.” No answer.
I selected the least-disgusting-looking box, a tough choice, and reluctantly
brought it to the table. In the refrigerator all we had now was skim milk.
Not even one percent. I hate skim milk. Milk shouldn’t be blue. I brought the
carton to the table, too. Kate was
examining her coffee cup, stirring the coffee with a spoon, though she hadn’t
added anything to it. “A girl can dream, can’t she?” she finally said in her
sultry I felt bad
for her, but I didn’t pursue the subject. I mean, what’s to say? She must
have expected more from me when she married me, We met at
a mutual friend’s wedding when both of us were pretty drunk. A guy I knew
from DKE, my college frat, was marrying a girl who went to At the
wedding, we were seated next to each other, and I immediately glommed on to
this hot babe, She seemed a little pretentious: a comp lit major at Harvard,
read all the French feminists—in French, of course. She also definitely
seemed out of my league. Maybe if we hadn’t both been drunk she wouldn’t have
paid me any attention, though later she told me she thought I was the best-looking
guy there, and funny, and charming, too. And who could blame her? She seemed
amused by all my stories about my job—I’d just started as a sales rep at Entronics, and I wasn’t yet burned-out. She liked the
fact that I was so into my work. She said that I was such a breath of fresh
air, that it really set me apart from all her clove-cigarette-smoking,
cynical male friends, I probably went on too much about my master plan, how
much money I’d be pulling down in five years, in ten years. But she was taken
by it. She said she found me more “real” than the guys she normally hung
with. She didn’t
seem to mind my dorky mistakes, the way I mistakenly drank from her water
glass. She explained to me the dry-to-wet rule of table setting, with the
water and wine to the right of your plate and the bread and dry things to the
left, Neither did she mind that I was a lousy dancer—she found it cute, she
said. On our third date, when I invited her over to my apartment, I put on Ravel’s “Bolero,” and she laughed, thought I was being
ironic. What did I know? I thought “Bolero” was classic make-out music, along
with Barry White. So I was
born with a plastic spoon in my mouth. Obviously Kate didn’t marry me for my
money—she knew plenty of rich guys in her social circles—but I think she
expected me to take care of her. She was on the rebound from an affair she’d
had with one of her college professors right after
she graduated, a pompous but handsome and distinguished scholar of French
literature at Harvard, whom she discovered was simultaneously sleeping with
two other women. She told me later that she considered me “down-to-earth”
and unpretentious, the polar opposite of her three-timing, beret-wearing,
silver-haired father-figure French professor. I was a charismatic business guy who was crazy about her and would make her feel safe,
at least, give her the financial security she wanted. She could raise a
family and do something vaguely artistic like landscape gardening or
teaching literature at The plan
wasn’t for her to live in a fifteen-hundred-square-foot Colonial in the
low-income part of “Listen, Kate,” I
finally said after a moment of silence. “I’ve got an interview with Gordy this morning.” Her face lit up. I
hadn’t seen her smile like that in weeks. “Already? Oh, Jason. This is so
great.” “I think Trevor has it
sewed up, though.” “Jason, that’s just
negative thinking.” “Realistic thinking.
Trevor’s been campaigning for it. He’s been having his direct reports call Gordy and tell him how much they want Trevor to get the
job.” “But Gordy must see through all that.” “Maybe. But he loves
being sucked up to. Can’t get enough of it.” “So why don’t you do
the same thing?” “I hate that, It’s
cheesy. It’s also devious.” She nodded. “You don’t
need to do that. Just show him how much you want the job. Want an omelet?” “An omelet?” Was there
such thing as a tofu omelet? Probably. Tofu and scrambled eggs too, I bet. This
could be nasty. “Yep. You need your
protein. I’ll put some Canadian bacon in it. Gordy
likes his guys to be meat-eaters, right?” Some of the characters are poorly
developed, but the plot momentum of Killer
Instinct overcomes those shortcomings. This is a great book to read while
you’re on business travel. Steve Hopkins,
January 25, 2007 |
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The recommendation rating for
this book appeared in the February
2007 issue of Executive Times URL for this review: http://www.hopkinsandcompany.com/Books/Killer
Instinct.htm For Reprint Permission,
Contact: Hopkins & Company, LLC • E-mail: books@hopkinsandcompany.com |
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