Book Review: The Protégé by Stephen Frey

Money. And lots of it.

That's what Christian Gillette gets to play with as the chairman of Everest Capital, a private equity firm whose billions in assets dwarf the competition. Gillette first appeared in author Stephen Frey's 2005 novel The Chairman, in which Gillette barely survived insidious corporate intrigue while investigating the murder of his boss (but survive - and flourish - is what Gillette did).

Now firmly ensconced at the top of Everest's power structure and wielding an impressive amount of economic clout, Gillette yet again faces the task of snatching victory from the jaws of defeat. David Wright, Gillette's hand-picked golden boy (and the "protégé" of the book's title), pushed a bondage session with a prostitute too far (apparently, he can't get rid of "the awful sound of her neck snapping like a brand new Ticonderoga pencil between two thumbs"). Unbeknownst to Gillette, that fatality gets swept under the rug by forces intent on utilizing Wright - and Everest - for their own agenda.

The disparate plot threads include government spies, nanotechnology, Gillette's own personal family history (namely, the mysterious plane crash that claimed the life of his father), the mob, and pro football in Las Vegas. Not to mention his ongoing relationship with Faith Cassidy, a pop singer on the cusp of international celebrity. Gillette is summoned to a secret meeting with a man who promises new information about Gillette's father in exchange for a favor. But the deal quickly becomes more than Gillette bargained for, and he soon finds that both Everest's financial stability and his own life are at stake.

Frey is himself a principal in a private equity firm situated in northern Virginia, and his writing carries the ring of authenticity. As a financial thriller, The Protégé clearly reflects Frey's command of the underlying environment in which such high profile deals are brokered. At the same time, however, the multiple plot points co-exist only uneasily together, and the different strands of the narrative threaten at times to unravel, thus endangering the fabric of the overall story. That Frey manages to hold them together until the end is a credit to his narrative control, but the story still seems to suffer a bit from a sense of being overstuffed with action which heads off in so many different directions.

Article Author: W.E. Wallo

W.E. Wallo is a book and movie junkie whose writings have appeared in a variety of print and online publications.

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