Finder, Joseph: Paranoia

St. Martin's © 2004, 466 pages [amazon]

Adam Cassidy was just another drudge in a cubicle farm, doing as little as he had to to keep his job at Wyatt Telecommunications. But his practiced underachievement ended suddenly the day after he effectively embezzled $78,000 from his employer: Adam threw an elaborate catered party for a retiring dock worker and billed the affair to the company. Adam's prank, as he naively thought of it, attracted the attention of the company's megalomaniacal president Nick Wyatt, who found something to like in his employee's attempts to talk his way out of trouble. He issued Adam an ultimatum: serious jail time unless he agreed to become a mole in another technologies company, Wyatt rival Trion Systems. An intense few weeks of training followed while Adam was groomed--literally and figuratively--for his new role. He emerged from Wyatt's crash course with the look and (faked) credentials of a rising corporate superstar, and with the know-how that would allow him to land a job at Trion and defeat the company's elaborate security systems once he got there.

Working with unprecedented fervor by day in order to fake his way in a position for which he is not qualified, Adam is forced to spend many of his nights prowling around the darkened headquarters of Trion, breaking into offices, scamming security guards, riffling through top secret files.Adam's story, told in the first person, becomes increasingly suspenseful the longer our hero stays at Trion. Working with unprecedented fervor by day in order to fake his way in a position for which he is not qualified, Adam is forced to spend many of his nights prowling around the darkened headquarters of Trion, breaking into offices, scamming security guards, riffling through top secret files. His actions are fraught with danger, and they become increasingly difficult for him morally as well. Fed information on the sly by Wyatt, Adam appears at work as a kind of Wunderkind and moves up the corporate ladder with impressive celerity. Now enjoying constant access to Trion's founder and president, Adam becomes fond of the man whose company he is doing his best to undermine.

Finder's novel is an exciting, well-written, fast read. Though filled with corporate speak and technical jargon, the book is never weighed down by it. And the corporate world to which Finder introduces us, with its petty politics and hierarchical struggles, is fascinating. The story's various twists and the increasingly impossible position in which Cassidy finds himself will keep readers riveted.

Tags: book reviews, books, Joseph Finder, Paranoia