Wall Street Blues

Aging yuppie financier Paul, the narrator of this enjoyable thriller of financial skullduggery, is over his head in debt. The six-figure income he pulls in as a ""financial advisor'' (read money launderer) to a roster of dubious New York figures is not nearly enough to cover his and his wife's extravagant lifestyle. Moreover, he has succumbed to the wiles of his provocative and psychotic secretary Monica, and she's blackmailing him. When smooth-talking Alex Jordan recruits him as a participant in a Wall Street fraud, he's only too willing to collaborate. The operation involves buying out small entrepreneurs, extracting the cash from their businesses and peddling the resultant shells to gullible pigeons. But Paul's parochial-school-trained conscience rears itself at the last minute, and forces him to spill the beans to the Feds. Tucille, author of a number of nonfiction works involving finance (Trump, Inside the Underground Economy), has here produced a fast-paced psychological thriller based on the all-too-common events chronicled in current financial journalism. This book will confirm the fears of those who have believed all along that the action on Wall Street is mostly a scam. (May)