Rating: 
Summary: A gripping, fast-paced thriller.
Review: Angela Day has a past she would like to forget. She came from a poor family, only to marry a horrible man with a powerful family to whom she loses custody of her only child. But, at thirty-one Angela has managed to have a great career at Sumter Bank until she gets an offer from Jake Lawrence.Jake Lawrence is a reclusive multibillionaire who plans on taking over a hot, new company... he also happens to be a stockholder at Sumter Bank. Jake sets up his meeting with Angela to make her an offer...an offer she can't refuse. The terms of the offer are simple; Angela uses her skills, and charm to oversee the takeover and make sure everything goes smoothly, and secretly, and Jake will have her permanently reunited with her son. This reward is one Angela will risk everything for, and accepting the offer will mean just that, for behind the take-over is a master player willing to kill to get what he wants. The clock is ticking as Angela races to clear her name, and bring down the dirty players within her own company before they strike out at what is most precious to her. 'Silent Partner' is a gripping, suspenseful, page-turner that can't be put down once started. Fast action, and multiple plot lines keep things going until the exciting climax where all the pieces of the complex puzzle come together. Well written, and extremely fast paced, 'Silent Partner' surprises with every turn of the page, and will satisfy even the most jaded thriller readers. Stephen Frey is the master of the financial thriller, and as long as he keeps turning out novels like this he will never lose the title. I have been a fan of Frey's since the publication of his first novel 'The Takeover', and every novel since has been excellent with 'Silent Partner' being about the best yet. Expect to see this novel on all the bestseller lists. Nick Gonnella
Rating: 
Summary: exciting financial mystery
Review: Angela Day has come a long way from her trailer park salad days as she is now a rising bank executive in Richmond, Virginia though she detests her racist boss Good Ole Boy Bob Dudley. The Sumter Bank Chairman uses his position of authority to keep blacks out of white neighborhoods by denying loans. Billionaire software mogul and growing Sumter bank stockholder Jake Lawrence summons Angela to meet with him to discuss the removal of Dudley to be replaced by her. Angela sees an opportunity for herself with the dislodging of her odious boss and an even greater break for the community especially the middle class black. She might even be able to leverage her ex for greater custody of their child. However, acceptance of the job or not, Angela finds herself tugged between two forces that apparently have no interest in her or the community except for what they can obtain from both with her only seemingly ally, a muckraker. SILENT PARTNER is an exciting financial mystery that is at its best when Stephen Frey provides a behind the scenes look at regional banking. However, much of the cast is stereotyped and taken from headline news. The immoral Southern good ole boys get away with rape and murder while disapproving loans for optimistic black wannabe homeowners. Thus, the prime theme of redlining seems pale in comparison. Still the heroine makes the novel worth reading as she is an intrepid individual whose accomplishments and willingness to do what she believes is the right thing for her community keeps the story line focused. Harriet Klausner
Rating:
Summary: A Real Page Turner - Fast Paced If Unbelievable Action
Review: Angela Day, the central character of this story, has managed to overcome a life of poverty and tragedy to to create a rewarding career as a respected lending officer with Sumter Bank in Richmond, VA. However she is still haunted by the death of Sally Chambers, her childhood friend and college roommate, during their senior year at the university. (It is a central element of the story that Angela is white and Sally was black.) Over a decade later, Angela still feels reponsible for the circumstances of Sally's death and the racism that was responsible for the tragic incident; this experience has imbued her with a deep seated hatred of the residual traces of racism that still may be shared by some of the top managers of her bank. Thus, she has chosen to help Liv Jefferson, a local reporter, unearth material for an expose concerning the lending practices of Sumter bank. The other major regret in Angela's life is her divorce from Sam Reese, the son Chuck Reese, one of Richmond's wealthiest men and a sworn enemy of Bob Dudley, the chairman of Sumter Bank. Chuck believed Sam married beneath himself and convinced Sam to divorce Angela and marry into society. He also arranged for Sam to win the custody case for their six year old son Hunter, so that Angela has minimal visitation rights and is fearful that her relationship with Hunter will deteriorate as he grows up with the advantages that the Reese family can offer him. Suddenly, an opportunity is offered for Angela to advance her career and regain custody of Hunter at the same time. She is summoned to a secretive meeting in Wyoming with the reclusive multi-billionaire Jake Lawrence to be his go-between and do due diligence for an acquisition that he wants to consummate. Jake Lawrence has also been acquiring an ownership interest in Sumter Bank, and Bob Dudley and his management team become paranoid that Angela (who has been sworn to secrecy by Jake) is really helping Jake prepare for a takeover of Sumter. Soon it becomes evident not only that Jake Lawrence has to fear for his life given the powerful enemies that he has created, but that Angela has taken on an assignment that has put her in serious danger as well. Thus Jake's ranch foreman and trusted lieutenant John Tucker is commissioned as Angela's aide and bodyguard. The above description only gives the most elementary outline of the complexity of this story. The author's familiarity with the financial world allows him to provide enough detail to allow the reader to develop the necessary understanding of corporate takeovers and financial maneuvering to make the individual elements of the plot believable. And the only error that I noted in this regard was referring to the key decision elements of leading edge predictive software as logarithms rather than algorithms. The key to my enjoyment of this story was the complexity of the plot, the many separate but interrelated (and in the end essential) story lines, and the incredible misdirection. In many ways reading this is like trying to anticipate the next development in a detective story. The clues are there, but most evident only in retrospect. (Although I was successful in anticipating the story in a few instances.) However, despite the fact that the roles of many of the characters are not what they seem, after reading the conclusion I felt that I had been mislead unfairly in just one instance. In conclusion, I found this book to be a real page turner. While the elements involving financial markets were the centerpiece of the story, this was more action filled and concerned with personal relationships and questions of ethics and morality than Frey's other books. The character development is adequate for his purposes but certainly not the reason to read the story. I recommend this book strongly, my only reason for not rating it five stars is that while the story was cohesive and internally consistent, the combination of all the elements makes it necessary for the reader to suspend belief as the layers of complexity are revealed.
Rating: 
Summary: Silly, infantile, inane, and poorly written
Review: Frey's America is rife with racists of all stripes controlling the industrial and financial machinery that runs this country. The book starts out with some fraternity boys killing a ... for good measure. It then goes on to explain that despicable racists are running the major financial institutions in Richmond. Their conversations are the sort contrived in the fetid overwrought imagination that only a devout Leftist could possibly believe in. Conspiracies lurk everywhere. The dialog is simply awful. Unless you're a dyed in the wool Democrat who believes that Dubya stole the election and that Algore would have made a terrific president don't bother with this piece of tripe.
Rating:
Summary: Silly, infantile, inane, and poorly written
Review: Frey's America is rife with racists of all stripes controlling the industrial and financial machinery that runs this country. The book starts out with some fraternity boys killing a ... for good measure. It then goes on to explain that despicable racists are running the major financial institutions in Richmond. Their conversations are the sort contrived in the fetid overwrought imagination that only a devout Leftist could possibly believe in. Conspiracies lurk everywhere. The dialog is simply awful. Unless you're a dyed in the wool Democrat who believes that Dubya stole the election and that Algore would have made a terrific president don't bother with this piece of tripe.
Rating:
Summary: The only mystery of this book is that it...
Review: got published. The plot is dull, uninspired and relies more on coincidence than anything I've read since Charles Dickens. Grinding through this book was less exciting than opening a loaf of bread. If you loved Nancy Drew mysteries this book will still be a challenge because the writing is every bit as absurd as the plot. Worse, the characters are painfully predictable and somehow thought to be interesting because they are so, so, so politically correct. Thus, white males are dumb and greedy. Rich white males and evil, dumb and greedy. But, we are saved because the book is populated by bright, thoughtful, sensitive, tough, smart, tender (but not too tender) and moral women. The minority woman has the moral high ground throughout. Tedious to be confronted by a book wallowing so hopelessly in its own political message. The book ends with a rush as if the author had tired of inventing coincidences and had hit the total number of words agreed to with his publisher. Indeed, the plot is so thin I had the impression that the book was little more than a stab and giving the author's agent something to flog around Hollywood where this sort of drivel wrapped around political correctness might well find a home - then tossed under the casting couch.
Rating:
Summary: The only mystery of this book is that it...
Review: got published. The plot is dull, uninspired and relies more on coincidence than anything I've read since Charles Dickens. Grinding through this book was less exciting than opening a loaf of bread. If you loved Nancy Drew mysteries this book will still be a challenge because the writing is every bit as absurd as the plot. Worse, the characters are painfully predictable and somehow thought to be interesting because they are so, so, so politically correct. Thus, white males are dumb and greedy. Rich white males and evil, dumb and greedy. But, we are saved because the book is populated by bright, thoughtful, sensitive, tough, smart, tender (but not too tender) and moral women. The minority woman has the moral high ground throughout. Tedious to be confronted by a book wallowing so hopelessly in its own political message. The book ends with a rush as if the author had tired of inventing coincidences and had hit the total number of words agreed to with his publisher. Indeed, the plot is so thin I had the impression that the book was little more than a stab and giving the author's agent something to flog around Hollywood where this sort of drivel wrapped around political correctness might well find a home - then tossed under the casting couch.
Rating:
Summary: Biased, boring, and dumb
Review: In Stephen Frey's world, apparently, all the villains are blonde haired fraternity members ("frat boys" in Freyese) or racist businessmen. The only decent people are either poor, members of ethnic minorities, or leftist acitivists. Matters are made worse by an unbelievable plot, plodding writing, and motivations, which to put it kindly, do not ring true. If Mr. Frey has any understanding of the subtleties of human nature or life's ambiguities, he fails to reveal it in "Silent Partner." I have read a lot of thrillers so the law of averages decrees that some of them were not very good. Nevertheless, I can't remember one as bad as this silly left-wing rant.
Rating:
Summary: Biased, boring, and dumb
Review: In Stephen Frey's world, apparently, all the villains are blonde haired fraternity members ("frat boys" in Freyese) or racist businessmen. The only decent people are either poor, members of ethnic minorities, or leftist acitivists. Matters are made worse by an unbelievable plot, plodding writing, and motivations, which to put it kindly, do not ring true. If Mr. Frey has any understanding of the subtleties of human nature or life's ambiguities, he fails to reveal it in "Silent Partner." I have read a lot of thrillers so the law of averages decrees that some of them were not very good. Nevertheless, I can't remember one as bad as this silly left-wing rant.
Rating:
Summary: Biased, boring, and dumb
Review: In Stephen Frey's world, apparently, all the villains are blonde haired fraternity members ("frat boys" in Freyese) or racist businessmen. The only decent people are either poor, members of ethnic minorities, or leftist acitivists. Matters are made worse by an unbelievable plot, plodding writing, and motivations, which to put it kindly, do not ring true. If Mr. Frey has any understanding of the subtleties of human nature or life's ambiguities, he fails to reveal it in "Silent Partner." I have read a lot of thrillers so the law of averages decrees that some of them were not very good. Nevertheless, I can't remember one as bad as this silly left-wing rant.
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