Trust Fund - Hardcover

Frey, Stephen

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0345428293 ISBN 13: 9780345428295

Publisher: Ballantine Books, 2001

Synopsis

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Takeover and The Insider comes a riveting new novel pitting brother against brother and putting personal honor to the ultimate test--in the world of high finance and boundless ambition among power brokers from Wall Street to Washington.

A scion of wealth and privilege, Bo Hancock is the youngest son of Connecticut's most influential clan--and the financial genius at Warfield Capital, the multibillion dollar investment firm at the heart of the family dynasty. He is also stranded in the shadow of his charismatic brothers, Teddy and Paul, and starved for the approval of their domineering father. While his brothers enjoy the spotlight, Bo can be counted on to "clean up" when anything threatens to tarnish the sterling Hancock name.

Sixteen years ago, Bo covered up a monstrous crime involving Paul and a call girl. Now Paul is on the fast track to the White House--and Bo has become a liability, thanks to his weakness for alcohol and for women other than his wife. Stripped of his position and exiled to the backwoods of Montana--away from temptation and the public eye--Bo thinks his life has hit rock bottom.

But a deathbed reconciliation with his father brings him home and reinstalls him at Warfield Capital, sparking a rapid-fire chain of events that could destroy the family and its vast fortune. First Warfield is left vulnerable to every Wall Street shark out to make a killing. Then a sudden rash of real killings forces Bo to confront the specter of a sinister conspiracy--and brings him face to face with one shocking truth after another, shattering the world and the family he thought he knew . . . leaving him utterly alone and running for his life.

Trust Fund moves at hyperspeed from the canyons of Wall Street to the corridors of Congress to private sanctums of inherited wealth and power. It is the tale of a great American political and financial dynasty wrenched apart by its own fierce ambition--and by one son's determination to forge his own destiny on his own terms.

About this title

Review

Like many American fathers, Jimmy Lee Hancock likes to get nice things for his kids. Teddy, his eldest son, got the CEO slot at Warfield Capital, the Hancock's multibillion dollar hedge fund. Bo, the black sheep trading genius who actually runs Warfield, got the title of chief operating officer. And if good-looking Paul's a really good boy, he can trade in that musty old Connecticut governorship for a shiny, new U.S. presidency.

But first things first. Things like removing the hard-drinking, carousing, possibly womanizing, PR-nightmare-in-the-making Bo to a family compound in Montana and replacing him with duplicitous trading whiz Frank Ramsey. And with Bo tucked away from the prying eyes of the press, Jimmy Lee can ice Paul's presidential cake by cooking his primary opponent's political goose with career-destroying evidence. The evidence, offered for sale by a deeply covered government cabal with an eye towards global domination, is Jimmy Lee's for a mere $2 billion.

Meanwhile, literally back at the ranch, Bo gets word from a trusted Warfield insider that Ramsey's up to no fiscal good. Then Jimmy Lee suffers a heart attack and the loose-lipped Warfield snitch wakes up dead. As Bo returns to Manhattan to see Jimmy Lee, reclaim his rightful place, and rid the shop of rats, bodies drop like autumn leaves and the plot, Yogi Berra-like, comes to frequent and ever-more sinister forks in the road and gleefully takes them all.

And very effectively, too. Frey's no world-class writer. His characters tend to be as one-dimensional as their dialogue is wooden, but readers who notice likely won't care a whit. As a world-class financier (formerly in mergers and acquisitions at J.P. Morgan, now with a private equity firm), Frey knows the ins and outs of very high finance and has an historical and bestselling knack (see The Insider, The Legacy, The Inner Sanctum, etc.) for weaving that knowledge into intricate, gripping, and bankable plots. Trust Fund's among them. --Michael Hudson

From the Back Cover

"[A] high-finance Thriller . . . The twists and turns of the plot come rapidly."
-Chicago Tribune

About this edition

• Publisher: Ballantine Books
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0345428293
• ISBN 13: 9780345428295
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 352