Wealth Management

Zuckerman, who has won two Edgars and an Emmy for his work on Law & Order, makes his fiction debut with a gripping thriller. At the reunion of three Harvard Business School graduates—Rafe Sassaman, Majid Hassan, and Catherine Cole—in Geneva, Switzerland, Sassaman tells his former classmates that he’s representing a new cutting-edge hedge fund that isn’t picky about potential clients’ ethics. He uses that pitch to convince Cole, an investment banker, to connect him with one of her clients, Stanley Pleski, a former lawyer for the Detroit mob, now a money launderer for Russian organized crime. Pleski’s image as a “two-bit hustler” has enabled him to evade law enforcement scrutiny for years, but now he’s the target of Sassaman, who’s actually with the U.S. Treasury. Sassaman’s investigation is made more challenging by his past with Cole, a former lover, who’s now hooked up with Hassan, another banker, who finds his dealings under scrutiny by the Nigeria Police Force. Zuckerman makes the intricate plot accessible for the financially illiterate while keeping readers invested in how everything plays out. Fans of David Ignatius’s The Bank of Fear will look forward to more from Zuckerman. Agent: Amanda Urban, ICM Partners. (Sept.)