Paranoia

I feel mixed on this one, the sixth book I've read from the Suspense portion of The Ultimate Reading List. It read very quickly, easy reading with short chapters and while the style is far from literary, it compares well against the likes of Dan Brown, James Patterson or Harlan Coben. I know some reviews complained of the style, citing in particular the use of the juvenile and jerky phrase "bodacious ta-tas" to describe the love interest. All I can say is that the voice sure fits the first person narrator, Adam Cassidy. He is juvenile and a jerk. The kind of guy from whom I'd back away slowly if he tried hitting on me, and I'd hate working with me, over me or under me. The kind of guy who used to take pride in how much he could slack show more off work, he fraudulently uses company funds to throw a retirement party for a coworker without counting the cost, and then is shocked, shocked when the bill comes to over 78,000 dollars and he is told that adds up to embezzlement and possibly decades in prison. Except he makes a deal with the company head, Nick Wyatt. They'll drop the charges if Adam infiltrates Wyatt's main competitor in the high tech business, Trion Systems.

A couple of things kept me reading. First, sleaze Adam might be, he's not completely unsympathetic. He's taking care of his dying abusive father, a man who'll never be proud of him no matter what he does. And he does develop a twinge of conscience, some guilt for what he's doing to people who have given him his first real chance. At one point, when his slacker friend Seth boasts of how he avoids doing anything productive at work, Adam asks him just who Seth is cheating by doing that, and I thought he might be learning something. The other reason this kept my interest through over 400 pages was the look at corporate espionage. Finder worked as a Sovietologist in academia and is a member of The Association of Former Intelligence Officers. Each of the nine parts of the book has a piece of tradecraft as its title and is headed by a definition from The Dictionary of Espionage: Fix, Backstopping, Plumbing, Compromise, Blown, Dead Drop, Control, Black Bag Job, Active Measures. The action of each part is an illustration of each word. Finder also evidently did his research on high tech industries, although at times I wished he didn't feel the need to show off all the jargon. So that I mostly found this an interesting ride to the end earns this a three.

The book might have earned a four from me were it not for the ending. Other reviews said they hated that ending, but I think for reasons different than mine. I didn't mind the open ending, didn't even think it abrupt, but I hated the entire destination, sensibility behind the whole twist. And it's not as if that twist didn't play fair. In fact it made sense of what seemed gaping plot holes from the beginning. A lot falls into place afterwards. But I still hated it, in a I-doubt-I'll-ever-read-this-author-again way. It's too cynical and too slick, and in its way far too predictable. I hate how it confirms the worldview of the worst characters in the book. For its, yes, paranoid, view of the business world and ambition. show less

Nobody is murdered. There are no courtroom scenes. Nothing blows up. And not a single vehicular chase scene lies between the covers. Yet "Paranoia" is one of the most riveting thrillers I've ever read.

Adam Cassidy is your classic corporate slacker, more interested in late-night partying than grinding away in his cubicle at tech giant Wyatt Enterprises. Cassidy's happy-go-lucky lifestyle takes a hard turn when he's caught embezzling company money from Wyatt to fund an extravagant retirement party thrown as a prank for a loading dock worker. Facing the threat of a felony prosecution, Cassidy allows himself to be blackmailed into infiltrating Wyatt's chief competitor Trion Systems as a corporate spy. His mission: to ferret out the details show more of Trion's most secret research-and-development project.

Benefiting from coaching and inside information supplied by Wyatt's overbearing CEO, Cassidy passes himself off a rising star and gains entry into the Trion CEO's inner circle. The tension and suspense mount as Wyatt forces Cassidy to take riskier and riskier actions to pilfer Trion's most coveted trade secrets. With his Trion coworkers growing increasingly suspicious of his actions, Cassidy's situation becomes unbearably dire.

I won't reveal anything more about the plot except to say that the ending of this book is as good as any I've experienced in the thriller genre. With "Paranoia," Joseph Finder has taken the basic plot arc of the spy thriller and transplanted it into the corporate setting, almost single handedly establishing the "corporate thriller" as an exciting new subgenre of suspense fiction. And for you technophiles out there, the gadgets discussed in the book couldn't be more timely, with Apple's iPhone and other multi-purpose handhelds headlining today's business pages.

-Kevin Joseph, author of "The Champion Maker" show less

“When everything's coming your way, maybe you're driving in the wrong lane”
― Joseph Finder, Paranoia

Wonderful! I adored this tight corporate thriller. In fact not since Disclosure have I enjoyed a book like this so much.

This book is so well written. It's long but extremely well paced and everything flows perfectly. It is hard not to like the main character who absolutely has his issues but really is at heart a decent guy. And the fact that the book is soo long and does not have as much dialogue as one might expect and still manages to be terrif, says alot.

SPOILERS:

I was a bit confused by the ending..was not sure what the final outcome was though I do not think I am alone on that. The corporate executives are sleezy as anything and show more chillingly creepy because they are so realistic. I mean I have no problem thinking something like this has happened or even is happening even as I write this.

Would love to see a sequel although I doubt that will happen. Side note: this book was turned into a film but no way did the film do the book justice although it is still a decent movie. show less

I would never have read this if a company hadn't given me a free audio download of the book. The theme is corporate culture and espionage and those aren't genres I've previously explored, but I did find this pretty interesting throughout. Lots of twists and turns along the way as our hero becomes a kind of double agent, hired by one corporation to spy on another. I found "Paranoia" a little long but overall I'd say it was an intriguing read.

If there is such a thing as chic lit then maybe there should also be a genre called Bloke Books into which I could place this one. I was enjoying the somewhat predictable but never-the-less action-packed plot about espionage in the apparently cut-throat world of Silicon Valley. However in the end (well page 132 to be precise) I couldn't get past the stereotyped, clunky characterisations. I don't think there's a woman alive who would do anything other than groan at this ridiculous sentence, used to introduce the potential love interrest for our luckless protagonist "Sometimes she wore heavy-framed black glasses, the kind that beautiful women wear to signal that they're smart and serious and yet so beautiful that they can wear ugly show more glasses". Pu-leeze. When, three pages later, he adds to his summation of her that that "this babe...had bodacious ta-tas" I gave up.

Maybe I am being unfair and there are as many blokes who find this stuff childish as there are women underwhelmed by the modern deluge of chic lit in which all women live to shop and all men are either well-meaning but useless or outright bastards. Whatever the case, I couldn't bring myself to read any more of this adolescent writing. show less

Adam Cassidy got caught with his hand in the corporate cookie jar. He got busted for throwing his loading dock buddy a retirement party like the ones executives get - on the company dime. But, instead of fraud charges, his company sent him into the competition to spy. The premise is fairly lame but the book is great. If you have ever worked in a corporation anywhere in that section from the middle management to the top, you will know this story is so possible that it is probably going on somewhere right now.

Enjoyable although the writing is a bit pedestrian. This tale of corporate espionage holds your interest all the way through, and the atmosphere of a high tech company is fairly realistic, although the technology itself is more than a bit dated, even in the few years since this book was published. (Perhap's that is why Amazon is giving it away for the Kindle.) The bad guy (or the worst bad guy) in the book is clearly modeled after Oracle's Larry Ellison, whom the author must really hate. Some good twists keep this one from losing your interest. Finder throws you for a loop at the end, however, and could perhaps have come up with a better, more satisfying ending. A better title than "Paranoia" would have been "Cynicism". Too damn long, show more however. show less