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Since the deregulation of U.S banks under the Ronald Reagan administration, the worst people in the universe have immigrated to Wall Street. It's a place where hope is dead and where your retirement money is being used for coke and whores money by a dashing banker. That said, it's still a darn interesting place. Especially for fiction, where you can't ruin anybody's life. The debut novel of author Ted Scofield EAT WHAT YOU KILL is a financial thriller that exposes the dark nature of Wall Street and the chaotic path that your money can take in the wrong people's hands. EAT WHAT YOU KILL is not a grand achievement, but it's a decent novel stays within itself.
Evan Stoess is a young and struggling Wall Street analyst with an unlikely background. He would've never been supposed to make it in the financial world, but here he is, knocking on the door of big time success with an investment in the pharmaceutical field. Unfortunately, fate knocks Evan's plans out of their tracks and he loses everything. Two years later, he's working for a firm who's speciality is to short stock, to bet on the failures of companies, and the opportunity of a major success shows itself again. The very determined (and borderline psychopathic) Evan will not let anybody, not even God, get in the way of his success again. When murder becomes an imperative to his career, he finds himself at the crossroads, with difficult choices to make.
I usually like financial thrillers, but financial thrillers don't usually like me. They are often written by ex-analysts or investment bankers who like to wallow in detail and complexity that are beyond my reach. I barely passed my weak math in high school, you know? EAT WHAT YOU KILL was surprisingly fun and straightforward, though. It focuses on one concept: shorting stocks and creates a narrative that exposes the idea suffuciently. It's a novel that never loses north and that never becomes complacent about financial details. EAT WHAT YOU KILL remains acessible to every kind of reader throughout its length. I guess you could say it's a novel with a mass appeal of some sort.
I didn't expect much out of EAT WHAT YOU KILL, but it kept finding ways to surprise me. Its structure is pretty classic, so classic that you can predict some of the plot twists, but author Ted Scofield succeeded in creating a protagonist that kept throwing monkey wrenches in my expectations. Evan Stoess is an interesting and unpredictable guy. He's hard to relate to, he's some kind of a psychopathic asshole, BUT he does have some humanity in him. Lots of psychopaths are overdrawn in literature. They are animals only worried to satisfied their immediate urges, but Evan Stoess is not like this. He has desires and discipline and he can see the big picture in his actions. The overall plotting of EAT WHAT YOU KILL might not successfully raise an eyebrow, but the subtly layered Stoess and the tormented decisions he takes will.
EAT WHAT YOU KILL is a first novel written the way it's supposed to be. Barring a couple exceptions, an author's first novel is never his best, and many newcomers end up writing atrocities trying to be transcendant. EAT WHAT YOU KILL remains within the conceptual frame it picked (financial thriller about stock shorting) and never attempts to draw beyond the lines once. It's of little interest if you don't like financial thrillers and it's not exacly a deep read, but I think that author Ted Scofield shows promise within the scope of his genre. Financial thrillers are usually heavy to digest, but this one is fluid and scrappy. Think WALL STREET meets THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY, watered down for the masses.