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Executive Times |
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2007 Book Reviews |
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Power
Play by Joseph Finder |
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Rating: |
** |
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(Mildly Recommended) |
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Click
on title or picture to buy from amazon.com |
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Offsite Joseph
Finder’s latest corporate novel, Power
Play, is perfect to tag along with you for your next offsite. What
happens to the executives of fictional Hammond Aerospace at their offsite
will bear no relationship to the teambuilding you’ll experience, except
perhaps for the eating and drinking. Jake Landry is another unlikely perfect
hero created by Finder, and the improbable events that populate this plot
will leave many readers amused and entertained. There are a few brushes with reality,
especially for aerospace companies, when Finder describes some bribery and
corruption. Here’s an excerpt, all of Chapter 3, pp. 16-21: I’d
met Hank Bodine a number of times, but I’d never actually been to his office
before, on the top floor of the I
waited outside Bodine’s office for a good twenty minutes, flipping through
old copies of Fortune and Aviation Week & Space Technology, wondering
why he wanted to see me. I kept adjusting my rumpled tie and thinking how
stupid it looked with my denim shirt and wishing I’d taken a couple of
minutes to change out of my jeans and into a suit. Everyone here at Finally,
Bodine’s admin, Gloria Morales, showed me in to Bodine’s office, a vast expanse
of chrome and glass, blindingly bright. It was bigger than my apartment. I’m
not exaggerating. There was even a wood-burning fireplace, which he’d had
installed at enormous expense, though there was no fire burning in it just
then. He
didn’t get up to shake my hand or anything. He sat in a high-backed leather
desk chair behind the huge slab of glass that served as his desk. There was
nothing on it except for a row of scale models of all the great Bodine
was around sixty, with silver hair, deep-set eyes beneath heavy black brows,
a high forehead, a big square jaw. If you’d met him only briefly, you might
call him distinguished-looking. Spend more than two minutes with him, though,
and you’d realize there was nothing distinguished about the guy. He was a
bully, most people said—a big, swaggering man with a sharp tongue who was
given to explosive tirades. Yet at the same time, he had a big, bluff
charisma—a kind of Jack Welch thing going on. Bodine
leaned back, folding his arms, as I sat in one of the low chairs in front of
his desk. I’m not short—just over six feet—but I found myself looking up at
him as if he were Darth Vader. I had a feeling the setup was deliberate, one
of Bodine’s tricks to intimidate his visitors. Sunlight blazed in through
the floor-to-ceiling glass behind him so I could barely make out his face. “What’s
the holdup at Fab?” “No
big deal,” I said. “A bonding problem in the vertical stabilizer, but it’s
taken care of.” Was that why he’d called me here? I braced myself
for a barrage of questions, but he just nodded. “All right. Pack your bags,”
he said. “You’re going to “ “The
offsite. The company jet’s leaving from Van Nuys in five hours.” “I
don’t understand.” The annual leadership retreat, at some famously luxurious
fishing lodge in “Yeah,
well, sorry about the short notice, but there you have it. Should be plenty
of time for you to pack a suitcase. Make sure you bring outdoor gear. Don’t
tell me you’re not the outdoors type.” “I do okay.
But why me?” His eyes bored
into me. Then the ends of his broad mouth turned up in an approximation of a
smile. “You complaining?” “I’m asking.” “Jesus Christ, guy, didn’t you
hear about the Eurospatiale disaster?” The crash at the Paris Air
Show, he meant. “What about it?” “Right in the middle of the
aerial demonstration, the pilot was forced to make an emergency crash
landing. An aileron ripped off a wing at thirty thousand feet and smashed
into the fuselage.” “An inboard flap, actually,” I
said. He looked annoyed. “Whatever.
The piece landed smack-dab on the runway at Le Bourget about six feet from
Mr. Deepak Gupta, the chairman and managing director of Air “Okay.” That I
hadn’t heard. “Mr. Gupta
didn’t even wait for the plane to crash,” he went on. “Pulled out his mobile
phone and called Mike and said he was about to cancel his order for
thirty-four Eurospatiale E-336 planes. Said those guys weren’t ready for
prime time. Wanted to talk business as soon as the show was over.” “That’s about
eight billion dollars’ worth of business,” 1 said, nodding. “Give or take.” “Right. I told
Mike not to leave Mumbai until he gets Mr. Gupta’s signature on the LOI.” An
LOI was a letter of intent. “I don’t care how sick of curry he gets.” “Okay.” He pointed at
me with a big, meaty index finger. “Lemme tell you something. It wasn’t just
one damned E-336 that crashed at Le Bourget. It was Eurospatiale’s whole
program. And Air “Okay, but the
offsite—” “Cheryl wants
someone who can talk knowledgeably about the female CEO in the sixty-year
history of Hammond Aerospace and, in fact, our first female top executive.
She’d been named to the job four months before, after the legendary James
Rawlings had dropped dead on the golf course at “What about Fred?” “Fred’s doctors won’t let him
travel yet.” Fred Madigan, the chief engineer on the SkyCruiser, had recently
had a triple bypass. “But there’s plenty of others.”
Granted, I probably knew more about the plane, overall, than anyone else in
the company, but that didn’t make any difference: I wasn’t a member of the
executive team. I was a peon. Bodine came
forward in his chair, his eyes lasering into mine. “You’re right. But Cheryl
wanted you.” He paused, lowered his voice. “Any idea why that might be?” “I’ve never
talked to Cheryl Tobin in my life,” I said. “She doesn’t even know who I am.” “Well, for
some reason, you’ve been asked to go.” “Asked or
ordered?” I thought he’d
smile, but he didn’t. “It’s not optional,” he said. “Then I’m
flattered to be invited.” A long weekend in a remote lodge in His phone
buzzed, and he picked it up. “Yeah. I’m on my way,” he said into the
mouthpiece. He stood up. “Walk with me. I’m late for a meeting.” He bounded out
of his office with the stride of an ex-athiete—— he’d played football at
Purdue years ago, I’d heard—and I lengthened my stride to keep up with him.
He gave Gloria a quick wave as we hurtled through his outer office. “One more
thing,” he said. “Before we reach the lodge, I want you to find out why that
plane crashed in The
executive corridor was hushed and carpeted, the walls mahogany and lined
with vintage airplane blueprints in black frames. “I’ll
do what I can.” “Not
good enough. I want the facts before we get to Some
other executive I didn’t recognize passed by, and said, “How’s it going,
Hank?” Bodine flashed a smile and touched two fingers to his forehead in a
kind of salute but didn’t slow down. “I
doubt I can call Eurospatiale and ask them, Hank.” “Are
you always this insubordinate?” “Only
with people I’m trying to impress.” He
laughed once, a seal’s bark. “You’re balisy. I like that.” “No,
you don’t.” He
smiled, flashing big, too-white teeth. “You got me there.” Then his smile
vanished as quickly as it had appeared. We
stopped right outside the executive conference room. I sneaked a glance
inside. One entire side of the room was a floor-to-ceiling window overlooking
downtown Ten
or twelve people were sitting in tall leather chairs at a huge 0-shaped
conference table made of burnished black wood. The only woman among them was
Cheryl Tobin, an attractive blonde in her early fifties wearing a crisp
lavender suit with crisp white lapels. Everything about her seemed crisp and
composed and efficient. Bodine
looked down at me. He was a good four inches taller than I and probably
seventy pounds heavier. He narrowed his eyes. “I’ll be honest with you. You
weren’t my choice to fill in for Mike.” Like I want to go? I thought. “I’m getting that
feeling.” “Cheryl’s
going to ask you all sorts of questions about the Sky-Cruiser. She seems
determined to shake things up, so she’s going to want to get involved in
every little detail—the weight issue, the software glitches, the quality
testing on the fuselage section, all that crap. And I just want to make sure
you’re going to give her the right answers.” I nodded. The right answers. What the hell did that mean? “Look, I don’t want any trouble
from you this weekend. We clear?” “Of course.” “Good,” he said, putting his
hand on my shoulder. “Just keep your head down and stay in your own lane, and
everything should work out okay.” I wondered what he was talking
about, what kind of “trouble” he was referring to. Then again, I don’t think Hank
Bodine had any idea, either. Jake
is the first person narrator, and despite his “too good to be true” heroic
attributes, the pace of the novel progresses well through his observations
and actions. Power
Play is fun to read, and, if nothing else, will make you feel better at your
next offsite. Steve
Hopkins, November 20, 2007 |
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The recommendation rating for
this book appeared in the December 2007 issue of Executive Times URL for this review: http://www.hopkinsandcompany.com/Books/Power Play.htm For Reprint Permission,
Contact: Hopkins & Company, LLC • E-mail: books@hopkinsandcompany.com |
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