Power Play

If Jake Landry, a tough guy with an understanding of airplane engineering and an innate grasp of corporate politics, is too good to be true, he’s still fun to watch in this sleek thriller from bestseller Finder (Killer Instinct ). A junior executive at California’s Hammond Aerospace, Landry possesses a remarkably flexible intelligence, which lands him on a high-end corporate weekend at a lodge called Rivers Inlet, where the new CEO, Cheryl Tobin, discreetly asks Landry to help her identify corrupt executives. Almost immediately, the lodge is assailed by five men who at first appear to be hunters turned vicious at the sight of the weekend participants’ enormous wealth. As they interrogate the executives, however, it becomes clear that they know quite a bit about Hammond and its workings. Landry’s job, then, is to figure out their purpose as well as rescue the entire crew. Tight, fluid writing more than compensates for the occasional plot implausibility. 200,000 first printing; author tour. (Aug.)