Global Finance is not one of my strong points; in fact, I’m not into numbers at all. However, Flash Point by Thomas Locke, intrigued me from the very start. I’m a fan of women who stand up for what they believe in, and Lena Fennan is one of those women. When she finds an anomaly in the bank’s portfolio, even though she is a junior analyst, she couldn’t leave the matter alone. She hooks up with an ethical attorney, Don Metzer, and they’re off to unravel one of the most nefarious schemes the world has seen to date.
In today’s technology-savvy world, transactions happen instantaneously. One slip, one wrong number, one bad set of partners, and the global finance system could come tumbling down. Theoretical, perhaps. Thomas Locke paints a very realistic picture of what could happen if safeguards are not tightly in place.
Enter Charlie Hazard and company, introduced in Trial Run. Not only have the financial systems been overtaken by technology, so has the human brain. A methodology for “walking in the shadow world” has been discovered and the good and bad guys battle it out there as well. This area intrigues me as well. What would happen if you got caught in the shadow world while out of your body?
How Lena and Charlie meet and join forces is worth the read. I’m beginning to hate Thomas Locke—he makes me think too much and draws me into his stories until I’m hooked and can’t put the book down. You will be too. Four stars—the book ended too soon!
Thomas Locke is the pseudonym for Davis Bunn, Oxford writer in residence and prolific author—more than seven million copies of his books have been sold worldwide, and he’s been translated into twenty languages. He divides his time between Oxford and Florida, teaches at writer’s conferences, and “holds a lifelong passion for speculative stories.”
Revell, a Division of Baker Books, provided me a copy of Flash Point, although I was in no way obligated to write a favorable review.