The Garden of Betrayal

Vance follows the success of his first book, Restitution, with another engrossing financial thriller built on his 20 years of experience as a trader at Goldman Sachs. One night in 2003, Mark and Claire Wallace's 12-year-old son, Kyle, goes out to rent a movie on Manhattan's Upper West Side and never returns, leaving his family devastated. In the present, Mark's career as an independent energy analyst gets an unexpected boost when he's offered secret research that appears to predict just how much crude the Saudis expect to pump before the depletion of their oil reserves. In the course of authenticating this data, Mark finds himself increasingly entangled in an ever-widening mystery that includes the murders of several of his friends and eventually encompasses the fate of his missing son. Vance is adept at inserting complex information without slowing the pace of the action or disrupting ongoing suspense. (Aug.)