Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, August 13, 1995 TAG: 9508140002
SECTION: BOOK PAGE: F4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: REVIEWED BY ROBERT HILLDRU
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
THE TAKEOVER. By Stephen W. Frey. Dutton. $19.95.
People with money can't be trusted, particularly when that money originally came from you, either as an investment or a purchase.
That's the theme of these remarkably similar novels, the first of which is the easier, more entertaining read, while the second is better written.
The premise of "Knockoff" is both sound and frightening: Any product that can be counterfeited for profit will be, sooner or later. Counterfeit scents may simply make you smell less charming than you had planned. Counterfeit tierods on your car can kill you. That's how this book starts.
Upscale Stores has gotten itself into a mess and the banks are going to take them over and fire their greedy president. But some Colombian bad guys have found a perfect way to launder their money. They loan it to stores like Upscale, which uses it to purchase from a worldwide inventory of counterfeit products that the bad guys have, thereby increasing everyone's profit margins.
The plot unravels because fortunately there are one or two honest folks left in retailing management, and the FBI operates with skill and dispatch.
Author Bill Levy has obviously done his homework and his tale sounds absolutely authentic. He tells it, however, in a stiff, almost amateurish and cliche-ridden manner that is saved only because it moves crisply and rapidly. It'd make a heckuva movie.
Frey's "The Takeover" spends more time in more boardrooms, and tangles itself in the machinations of the Federal Reserve and the presidency itself. In a sense, it's an old-timey capitalism-run-amuck type of plot and one keeps expecting either Teddy Roosevelt or one of the original newspaper muckrakers to leap around a corner and set everything aright.
The hero of this one is also an ambitious good guy who can't go along with some of the shady dealings he discovers.
There are hitmen and bloodsheddings in both books for those not adequately moved by the carnage of stock manipulations and leveraged buyouts. And both are enough to make you want to take your money and bury it in the backyard.
Robert Hilldrup is a Richmond writer and former newspaperman.
by CNB