Due Diligence

The pseudonymous Rush, a management consultant, succeeds against all odds at injecting suspense into the details of a corporate takeover in his thriller debut, but he loses points by resolving the intriguing plot with developments straight out of John Grisham. Rob Holding, a rookie analyst for the New York investment bank Dyson Whitney, gets tapped to be part of the team working to help Mike Wilson, CEO of the utility company Louisiana Light, acquire a British company in the same field. The transaction would yield a multimillion dollar payout for Dyson Whitney. The catch is Wilson's ambitiously short schedule to complete it. Rush tosses in elements that readers of The Firm will find all too familiar%E2%80%94mob ties and a young idealist who learns of corruption and must find a way to reveal it without jeopardizing his career and his life. The less than plausible denouement renders what came before more cartoonish than realistic. (May)