Finder, Joseph: Paranoia
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.
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.
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