Black Money

Nobody does the high-tech financial thriller better than Thomas ( Hanover Place ), and he's in top form with this not-quite-unbelievable story of how billions of dollars of drug money and other illicitly garnered funds are cleverly laundered right in the U.S. without having to be moved offshore first. This grand scheme begins to unravel when a low-level government investigator, while working to clean up the S & L debacle of the '80s, comes across a bank account that should not exist. From that small beginning, a disparate band of investigators sets out to uncover the truth. These are idealists, driven not only to expose fraud and corruption but also, in the words of one, ``to help history wield the lash of Mr. Reagan's era.'' Much of both the scam itself and the investigation centers around the Joint Expedited Data Interface (JEDI), a giant government databank. The intriguing cast includes wealthy journalist Lee Boynton and investigator Thurlow Coole for the good guys, and financier Mona Kurchinski, vice-presidential aide Rusty Oltington and computer whiz Peter Kim for the forces of evil. Most memorable of all proves to be former CIA spookmaster Henry Carew, who characterizes an attempt by one of his former students to assassinate him as ``disloyal and inhospitable.'' While the evil plans of the money launderers are uncovered as much by chance as anything else, it is in fact uncontrolled avarice that is their real undoing. In the end, it all comes down to greed. What a shame this book was not written, and read, by the appropriate people a dozen years ago. But then, it couldn't have been. Author tour. (June)