Final Target-Steven Gore

Final Target
Steven Gore
Poisoned Pen, May 2010, $24.95
ISBN: 9781590587492

Katie sends the letter to the FBI in San Francisco that President Matson of Surveillance and Targeting Technologies (SatTek) of San Jose was conducting illegal offshore money dumping. The whistleblower remembers her Russian name is Ekaterina just before she is killed.

International lawyer, Jack Burch is shot while jogging. He remains in a coma in a San Francisco Medical hospital. At about the same time Matson plea bargains with Assistant U.S. Attorney William Peterson over his jail time for embezzling three hundred million dollars in an offshore dumping. He blames the affair on comatose Burch, his attorney in setting up the offshore firms.

While the Feds led by Peterson salivate over hanging Burch for the white collar crimes and subsequent corporate collapse, his best friend private investigator Graham Gage rejects the theory of criminal activity by his buddy. He searches for the shooter and soon also who killed the whistleblower. He and his team begin to find ties between Matson and the Ukrainian mafia with links to that country’s presidency; treason apparently in two nations but the Feds prefers to not go that route.

This is a great financial investigative thriller that grips readers with Katie’s dying opening act and never slows down as Gage leads an inquiry that spans several nations in two continents while the Feds choose the easier low road. Fast-paced and gripping, sub-genre fans will relish Steven Gore’s strong tale that the author states in the afterward is based on real events of which he probed. Note to Poisoned Pen readers: this book was released as a mass market by HarperCollins in February.

Harriet Klausner