Paranoia by Joseph Finder Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Paranoia
Book Review: A fun book with a twist ending
Summary: 4 Stars
Paranoia is a thriller written by Joseph Finder set in the world of high-tech business. Adam Cassady shows up at work just to earn a paycheck, he has no ambition. Except he does find the time to embezzle about 70 grand to pay for a retirement party for a low level dock worker. His theft is discovered and the CEO of the company, Nick Wyatt, sees an oportunity. Adam must choose between jail and going to work for their competitor, Trion Systems, where he must discover the secret of the Aurora project.
Adam agrees and with help of staff at Wyatt Telecom, Adam is groomed to be a smart, savvy businessman. Nick Wyatt fills Adam with all kinds of technical knowledge that he can use to impress his new employers at Trion. Adam is also trained in how to conduct corporate espionage. Adam is hired by Trion and the fun begins. With the threat of jail looming, will Adam discover what the Aurora project in time?
This could have been a very suspensful novel, but it wasn't and I'm glad. There are several instances where Adam snoops around Trion and probably should have been caught. But he never was caught and so we never had to read about Adam lying to get himself out of trouble (except for a few times). The suspense in the novel comes as Adam begins to build friendships at Trion and starts to see himself as a Trion employee, actually forgetting that he is there to spy on them. Adam meets a girl and even works his way into the good graces of the CEO. What will happen when his new friends at Trion discover Adam was nothing but a spy?
Adam was actually a weak character for me. The novel was told from his point of view, so the story does move along quickly. Still, I never got a sense of who Adam was before all this happened and what made him embezzle the money.
The ending of the novel is a twist of somewhat. It might be easy for you to guess, or it might not, but the details of how it was done were quite interesting. I do have a complaint about the ending. I don't see any point in ending it that way. Even adding one more paragraph to explain what happens next would have been adequate.
This is my first Finder novel and I defintely want to read Company Man and his new novel coming out in the spring, Killer Instict.
Book Review: Brilliant.
Summary: 5 Stars
I don't read typically fiction, but this was a page-turner. Cancelled lectures, appointments and skipped work to finish this novel. Book Review: couldn't put it down
Summary: 5 Stars
This is by far the most compelling page turner that I have read in many years. It is pure fun. My 17 and 20 year-old sons loved it as much. I cannot recommend this book highly enough. While it's not literature, it is well written, with characters that you care about. The plot is imaginative. I used to love thrillers, but find that 90% of them do not engage me now. This is the rare thriller that exceeded my expectations.
Book Review: SOMNIFEROUS CORPORATE SLAM
Summary: 2 Stars
Adam Cassidy spends unauthorized company funds for a lavish party, is caught, and is threatened with jail for the transgression. Thus blackmailed, he becomes a spy for his ethically-challenged boss. His goal is to deliver information to his blackmailer on a secret project called AURORA, which is being run by a competitor company. Mr Finder does a serviceable job rendering Adam Cassidy as a believeable person caught in a trap. The insights into corporate security and intelligence and the world of corporate finance and operations provide the meat of PARANOIA. There is a lot of skulking about with the associated fear of being caught that makes up the tension in the book: if Adam is caught spying, his blackmailing boss will send him to prison. This is a purely intellectual thriller with no car chases, murders or gunshots. I think I would have liked a little of the rough trade here to kick this somniferous novel up a notch. I kept wanting to finish the thing, not to find out what happens at the end, but to be able to start a more absorbing book. I was disappointed by Mr. Finder's anti-capitalist message. Toward the end, one character makes a speech that could have been taken from a political pamphlet, droning that "corporate espionage...is as American as apple pie and Chevrolet...you didn't do anything that isn't done every day in corporations the world over...business, at the higest level, is deception. No one's going to admit that publicly, but that's the truth." This plus Adam's father's frequent rants against business and his girlfriend's fascination for lefty feminist singers. Stir all this up and you have a definite residual message that made me want to take a shower after reading the book. This would be a fun read for socialists to confirm their preconceptions but the writing is not compelling enough for the rest of us to spend our corporate dollars on.Book Review: Terrific
Summary: 5 Stars
I picked up Paranoia without knowing a thing about it or Joseph Finder, but the jacket said really nice things about his previous work, plus being a technology worker myself, the premise piqued my interest.
What an engaging book it was. It was fast paced, packed with detail--most of which rang true (more on that later) and enough characterization to let me root for and believe the characters.
The one criticism I can muster is that it's almost always an aspect of corporate fiction that corporate life is ultra slick, when for the most part it's gritty and a little soiled, filled with cubicles where people spill coffee and eat their food at their work stations. For the most part Finder sticks to that, which rings utterly true. It's only in the book's latter stages that we get the slick stuff. Finder claimed to have researched the piece thoroughly, so I can only conclude that beyond the level of rank and file grunt and in the largest and richest corporations that you get get to see all the cool gadgetry and whistle-clean corridors that Finder described.
Still, the whole thing worked like gangbusters. Highly recommended, and bring on the movie!