A Letter to Mr. FInder (Company Man Book Review Pt. 2)

Dear Joseph Finder:

I get up at 4:45 in the morning. That's early, okay? And I have to get up tomorrow at the same time. It is now approaching midnight. Why am I awake?

The answer, my friend, is you. You and your book, Company Man.

I began the final hundred pages about 90 minutes ago, and could not put it down until I finished.

Lest you read the last sentence as a compliment, let me elaborate: I have been desperate to finish your book since I hit the 250 page mark and realized that you had not only misplaced your editor's phone number, email address, name, and indeed your memory of his existence, but also murdered your internal editor in a metaphorically bloody ritualistic ceremony to honor Bor-om-edon, the god of pointless, rambling detail.

And so, I was determined this night to end your near endless tale so that I can move on to other things less painful.

Mucho kudos to your publisher for finding a sentence fragment from the Chicago Tribune review of Company Man to put on the cover that seemed to praise your work. "EVERYTHING A THRILLER SHOULD BE!"

Undoubtedly, this statement was taken from the somewhat more truthful sentence, "Everything a thriller should be in order to guarantee absolute apathy in readers toward its characters and plot."

Joe, it's too late for me to go into your forced parallelism between hockey and the corporate world, which you took painstaking steps to jam into every third chapter of your book. Or your choice of corporate setting. (Maybe there's a reason the office furniture sector had been heretofore unexplored in pop fiction?) Or how we get to read every profound revelation through all four of your main characters, each time as if it's something new. Seriously, how many times do we need to read that the house is going to blow up? We get it. We got it when you alluded to it on page 550, and again when Nick realized it on page 553, and again when Audrey figured it out on page 555, and so on. Did you have a page quota on this book? Were they paying you by the word?

There's so much more to be said here, but I'm tired, Joe. I'm tired.

Because I'm a glutton for punishment, and because your previous effort was not nearly as difficult to read, I will probably sit down with your follow-up, Killer Instinct. My hope is that your protagonist is not the CFO of the second largest sticky-label manufacturer in Northern Utah.

If you're a glutton for punishment or else want to see for yourself just how bad this piece of work is, check it out below. Otherwise, give Paranoia or a more recent, non-corporate thriller a try.