Product Description

Company Man, a deft mix of compelling story, distinctive narrative voice and full-bodied characterization, once again proves Finder to be a master of the modern thriller. Nick Conover, the son of a factory worker, is the CEO of a major corporation in a company town. Once the most admired man in Fenwick, Michigan, Nick - having presided over massive layoffs - is now the most despised. A single parent since the recent death of his wife, he's struggling to insulate his ten-year-old daughter and angry sixteen-year-old son from the town's hostility. When his family is threatened by a nameless stalker, events spin quickly out of control and Nick is faced with a dead body and damning circumstances. To protect his family, he must cover up the homicide. Now Audrey Rhimes, a police investigator with an agenda of her own, is determined to connect Nick to the homicide. Nick, in the meantime, begins to unravel a web of intrigue within his own corporation, involving his closest colleagues, that threatens to gut the company and bring him down with it. Nick Conover discovers that life at the top is just one small step away from a long plunge to the bottom.

Product Details

• Published on: 2005-04-19
• Format: Audiobook
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 14
• Binding: Audio CD

BOOD BOOK GUIDE
'Finder melds brilliantly orchestrated suspense with characterisation that has the richness of the best literary fiction.'

Review
'If ever there was an author to push characters to the precipice of despair it's Finder. Non-stop action, brilliant twists and a 446-page guarantee you won't sleep until it's finished.' (Shari Low DAILY RECORD )

'Finder melds brilliantly orchestrated suspense with characterisation that has the richness of the best literary fiction.' (BOOD BOOK GUIDE )

'Another brilliant thriller' (Alex Gordon PETERBOROUGH EVENING TELEGRAPH )

'Company Man will definitely feature in my best of 2005 ...this is a book that just makes you turn the pages, even when your eyes want to close at the end of a hard day. The story hooks you from page one and the pressure is unrelenting.' (Ali Karim SHOTS )

Shari Low, DAILY RECORD
'If ever there was an author to push characters to the precipice of despair it's Finder. Non-stop action, brilliant twists and a 446-page guarantee you won't sleep until it's finished.'

Customer Reviews

Watch out John Grisham!
Nicholas "Nick" Conover is the CEO of the Stratton Corporation. It is the well known name for "Made in the USA" office furniture. It is the largest employer in Portland. While the company ran smoothly, Nick was the most admired man in town. However, Nick became the most hated man when Boston forced him to lay off thousands. Everybody in town had at least one close relative that Nick had laid off. Everywhere he went, the locals made sure to remind him of their hatred.

When a stalker begins breaking into his home and vandalizing, the local police take their time in showing up. The police do not even pretend to collect evidence or care. Nick is a single father with two kids. So when the stalker becomes violent, Nick has some top grade security devices installed. Needless-to-say, when the alarms go off, Nick protects his family. After all, the police would not show up until it was WAY too late. Though it was self-defense, Nick knows the cops would enjoy slapping a murder label on him and hauling him off to prison. Therefore, Nick calls Eddie Rinaldi, Stratton's corporate security director, and ex-cop, who had installed Nick's home security devices. Eddie makes it all disappear.

At work, Nick realizes that he is not being informed about major company decisions. Nick and Eddie quietly investigate and begins to uncover a conspiracy against Nick that involves some of his closest colleagues. Nothing is making sense and everyone is lying to him.

Enter Homicide Detective Audrey "Aud" Rhimes. She has been paired with the loathsome and slovenly Roy Bugbee to investigate a body found in a dumpster on the wrong side of town. Clues are few, but Audrey keeps coming back to Nick as her main suspect. Her gut instinct insists that Nick knows something and is holding back evidence. When she learns of the previous break-ins and the department's numerous negligences about them, Aud cannot blame Nick for his silence. But she is determined to uncover the truth.

***** This author is every bit as good as John Grisham. This is a thick novel with unexpected twists throughout most of it. Readers can easily empathize with Nick. I found myself believing that I would have done exactly as Nick did, every step of the way. This novel starts out exciting and ends up with a huge climax. I was unable to put the book down for long and made lame excuses so I could return to Nick's world. Highly recommended! *****

Reviewed by Detra Fitch of Huntress Reviews.

mostly great
I have read all his books now and the latest three are of course the best. But Paranoia + Killer Instinct (latest) and this one do have a lot in common and I am getting a bit worried that he is going to start repeating himself too much. Hence I was very positive on the other 2 (5 stars), but this one gets 4 stars only. The story is a bit less good, a bit slow at times, a bit too long for what it actually has to say.
Why similar to the other two books ? Once again it is the story of some average guy (this time he is already CEO) who is in the middle of some manipulation but prevails in the end. The old friend is also there, this time he is the security director of the company (an ever present character). Once again the book will make you realise how emails are dangerous ...
Don't get me wrong: this is seriously good story-telling, the plot grips you tight, but there is definitely some air of de'j`a vu and I had guessed the end this time - which was impossible in the other two books.
Thanks to Joseph for a good string of books anyway !

A delightful riff upon literary traditions
Joseph Finder's Company Man is solidly rooted in traditions of story-telling and fiction, and, as T.S. Eliot postulated in Tradition And The Individual Talent that a novel should, it extends and adds substance to such traditions. One of those is the genre of theater of the absurd, or meaninglessness, popularized by Edward Albee. As in Albee's Zoo Story, many of the characters with whom we initially identify approvingly turn out to be tainted with conflicts of interest, dirty with ulterior motives; the politically correct exception is an African-American female homicide detective with sincere religious convictions. She is the true heroine, not the appealing but quietly deranged daughter (an uncanny precursor of the mad Korean student at Virginia Tech) of a mistakenly slaughtered man who had been one of the victims of a massive downsizing by a company presided over by the protagonist. The delight lies in the arch comments, wry remarks, and amusing allusions that pepper the narrative, such as the echoes of Shakespeare's Sonnet 130 in the protagonist's recollection that his first girlfriend looked nothing like the women featured in purloined Playboy centerfolds. One example especially stands out, and is reminiscent of Walter Matthau's impersonation of a priest in the film "Buddy Buddy": when asked to administer last rites to a dying man, the actor mumbles all the Latin phrases he can muster, including "habeas corpus" and "flagrante delicto." Here is the humorous dialogue between a father and his precocious nine year-old son:
"Dad, it's not supposed to be good for you to eat barbecued meats. ... Do you know that barbecuing at high heat can create polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, which are known to be mutagens?"
"Now that's where you're wrong, son. ... They used to think that aromatic hydrocarbons were bad. Now they know that they're the best thing for you. What do they teach you in school, anyway?"
... "Don't say I didn't warn you if you get cancer later in life."
"I'll be dead by then, son."
"But Dad...."
"Okay, kid, here's your burger. ... Go fetch yourself a bun and some ketchup, okay? So instead of cancer, you'll get salmonella and e. coli bacteria. Mad cow too, if you're really lucky."
... "But I thought e. coli naturally colonizes the human intestine."
... "You don't stop, do you? Go play in traffic."
This is reminiscent of Mark Twain's account of his aging mother reminding him that as a child he had suffered a severe illness:
"I was afraid."
"Afraid I'd die?"
"Afraid you'd live."