Company Man (ISBN 1593975953)

Winning Blend of Corporate Intrigue and Crime Fiction:
Company Man combines Joseph Finder's patented corporate thriller subject matter with that of a murder-based thriller. Finder's protagonist, Nick Conover, is refreshingly human for books of this sort. Although he has a painfully-familiar golden-boy pedigree (high school hockey star and BMOC) and now serves as CEO of the largest business in town, Stratton Corporation, Nick is a troubled man. As if the recent death of his wife, the challenges of raising two adolescent kids, and the local ostracism caused by laying off thousands of the town's residents weren't enough, Nick has to contend with a threatening stalker and a clandestine attempt by the Board of Directors to sell the company to overseas investors. While certain readers may condemn Nick for his choices, I appreciated the moral ambiguity in which Finder places his hero. All in all, Company Man may be Finder's most complex and fully-realized novel, yet no sacrifices were made in pacing or suspense quotient.

Thriller without many thrills:
If you read Finder's High Crimes and enjoyed it, you'll probably like Company Man, too. I didn't like High Crimes, and though I made it through to the interesting surprises at the end of Company Man, most of the middle 300 pages could be cut out without missing anything much. My secondary complaint is that this is a novel about a corporate executive, but the writer clearly doesn't know much about the lives of corporate executives to make the main character feel real. I do give Finder credit for having enough reviewers to remove most of the obvious errors and throw in a few tidbits of proto-corporatese and spend a little time learning about the furniture business, but it still lacked the feel of authenticity. My primary complaint is that except for the very ending, the book was a so-called 'thriller' without many thrills. Most of the plot was predictable and the story dragged on over 500 pages. It moved steadily, so I wasn't quite bored, but there are so many better thrillers out there, I wouldn't recommend Company Man except to Finder fans.

Stress Test?:
Put yourself in the place of this book's main character. You're Nick Conover the CEO of an office supply company. Your wife died recently. You've laid off 5000 workers and everyone in town hates you for it, and there seem to be company executives doing strange things behind your back. Your house is being stalked by some deranged individual, and your teen age son is into dope, and won't speak to you. There's also a new woman in your life and she's a bit, well, strange. Then there is a shooting, and, well, you are involved in that, too. Does Nick Conover have himself admitted to the nearest psychiatric facility? No, he plugs on through all these troubles, and when he dents the fender of his new Chevy Suburban even that doesn't make him blink. This is a great thriller with a fairly novel plot, and there isn't a dull spot in the whole book. The interesting thing is that you often don't know whether to be on his side or not, and you are really curious about how all of this will turn out. Mr. Finder is excellent at developing strong characters mainly through speech. Sure he tells you that one character is a tall muscular blond fellow, but you really get your feeling for the guy by how he talks. It's striking in this book how people show their nature by their speech and gestures. I've been on a thriller binge for the last month or so, and this is the best one I've read in a long time.

Not Finder's best:
I read Paranoia & Killer Instinct & loved them....very fast paced & great fun reads. Perhaps the main character is not as sympathic a personality in this story, because two thirds of the way through this I am not glued to the page. Adored his late wife who seemed spoiled & materialistic.....immediately falls for a woman totally opposite. Is CEO of an immense corporation but is naively trusting & ineffectual at command of the "ship" & as advisor to his kids. Simply not as believeable a story as the others. However, I won't give up on Joseph Finder..........I'm sure he has a lot more to give us !

Completely agree with other 1 star reviews:
I very much liked the other two Finder books I had read, Paranoia and Killer Instinct, before deciding to try this one, however, Company Man is so bad I couldn't even finish it which is something I very rarely do. The main character does his best to avoid rational decision-making and isn't really all that sympathetic and after a while I could not care less what happened to him.