"superb thriller"
Adam Cassidy works rather poorly as a minor product-line
manager at Wyatt Telecom. When his friend Jonesie
retires, Adam impersonates the VP for Corporate Events and
places an order with Meals of Splendor to cater a luncheon
on the loading docks to rival what they did last week for
the Salesman of the Year banquet. The gala continued past
midnight when a security guard heard the band still
playing. Adam anticipates being fired, but instead learns his
extravagance cost $78,000 and if he prefers to avoid a
stretch in the pen for embezzlement, he will become a high
tech industrial spy. Adam reluctantly begins working for
rival Trion Systems, but reports insider information to
Wyatt Telecom Corporate Security. Once proud of his high
ethical standards, Adam finds the people including the CEO
at Trion treat him with dignity ripping his soul further
asunder while he tries to gain knowledge about a quantum
leap forward in technology considered as big as the first
integrated circuit. Failure means jail; success means
betrayal. PARANOIA is a superb thriller that grasps the reader into
an all night stand because of the appealing central
protagonist. Adam changes from a character similar to the
heroic slacker of Office Space to a person struggling
with his conscience lecturing him like a teacher
haranguing a misbehaving student. While the suspense
grows as to whether he will do it or not, Adam knows that
author John C. Maxwell is right as There Is No Such Thing
as Business Ethics being any different than just living
and working according to the Golden Rule. He wonders how
he can do that without paying the price of twenty years in
prison. Harriet Klausner
Reviewed by PNR Group Member
Posted December 22, 2003
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