Mortal Bonds

by Michael Sears

Overview

Ex-Wall Street trader, ex-con, and devoted father to an autistic son, Jason Stafford first appeared in Black Fridays, “one of the year’s finest crime debuts” (Booklist). Now, in Mortal Bonds, he goes to work for the wealthy family of a financial criminal…
 
William von Becker’s multibillion-dollar fund was limited to only the luckiest investors. Or so they thought.
 
After the house of cards collapses and the disgraced von Becker commits suicide in prison, his family asks Jason Stafford to find out where the money is—and who is targeting them with attempted kidnappings. There are plenty of angry suspects to take a look at. But with roughly three billion of von Becker’s ill-gotten dollars floating around somewhere, there are other interested parties as well. They’re determined. They’re powerful. And they’re not nearly as polite as the Feds…

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781101636442
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	10/01/2013
Series:	A Jason Stafford Novel , #2
Sold by:	Penguin Group
Format:	eBook
Pages:	480
Sales rank:	824,018
File size:	1 MB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Michael Sears, the author of the Jason Stafford novels Black Fridays and Mortal Bonds, spent more than twenty years on Wall Street, rising to become the managing director in the bond trading and underwriting divisions of Paine Webber and, later, Jefferies & Company, before leaving the business in 2005.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

Praise for Mortal Bonds

“Stafford is a cool, edgy character.”—John Sandford

“A hero I'm still thinking about days afterward.”—Tess Gerritsen

“A twisty tale of greed…Grade: A.”—The Cleveland Plain Dealer

Raves for Black Fridays
Winner of the Shamus Award for Best First P.I. Novel
Nominated for the Edgar®, Anthony, International Thriller Writers’, and Barry Best First Novel Awards
 
“[An] exciting and compelling Wall Street thriller [with] an insider's jaded wit.”—The Wall Street Journal

“Definitely worth the investment.”—The Associated Press

Editorial Reviews

In Sears’s strong sequel to 2012’s Black Fridays, white-collar financier-felon Jason Stafford investigates some seriously shady activities on Wall Street on behalf of the family of William Von Becker, an infamous investor who ran a Bernie Madoff–inspired Ponzi scheme, lost billions, and killed himself in prison. The surviving Von Beckers—matriarch Olivia and her four grown children—engage Stafford to see if he can find the missing billions and “salvage something of the family name.” Stafford’s hunt for the money involves former Wall Street colleagues and some of the victims themselves, notably Tulio Castillo, a wealthy Colombian who may be involved in the drug trade. Meanwhile, Stafford continues to face some serious domestic difficulties: a young son with severe autism, a volatile ex-wife, and a girlfriend. The search for all that money in such a high-profile case feels like a longshot, to Stafford and the reader, but Sears’s knowledge of investment banking makes the plot compelling if not always convincing. Deft, witty prose is a plus. Agent: Judith Weber, Sobol Weber Associates. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

Praise for Mortal Bonds

“Stafford is a cool, edgy character.”—John Sandford

“A hero I'm still thinking about days afterward.”—Tess Gerritsen

“A twisty tale of greed…Grade: A.”—The Cleveland Plain Dealer

Raves for Black Fridays
Winner of the Shamus Award for Best First P.I. Novel
Nominated for the Edgar®, Anthony, International Thriller Writers’, and Barry Best First Novel Awards
 
“[An] exciting and compelling Wall Street thriller [with] an insider's jaded wit.”—The Wall Street Journal

“Definitely worth the investment.”—The Associated Press

From the Publisher

09/15/2013
Jason Stafford, on probation after imprisonment for fraud, certainly has the necessary skills to be a financial fraud consultant. When William von Becker is convicted of a huge Ponzi scheme and commits suicide, his son hires Stafford to find several billion dollars unaccounted for. The FBI and Securities and Exchange Commission naturally are interested, but so are Honduran drug dealers, Balkan thugs, and several von Becker family members. At the same time, Stafford must juggle care for his autistic six-year-old son and a visit from his alcoholic ex-wife seeking reconciliation. As bodies pile up and peril stalks Stafford from more than one direction, his hard-earned prison smarts, math skills, and Wall Street knowledge prove invaluable. VERDICT The author's two decades of Wall Street experience support Stafford's confident movement in the international world of bearer bonds, Swiss banks, and the superrich who use them. Introduced in the Edgar and Barry Award-nominated Black Fridays, Stafford again alternates between high-stakes risk-taking plus violence and the controlled world of his son, whom he'll do anything to protect. A touching, tense, and terrific thriller. [See Prepub Alert, 4/29/13.]—Roland Person, formerly with Southern Illinois Univ. Lib., Carbondale

Library Journal

2013-09-01
Disgraced Wall Street trader Jason Stafford hunts the proceeds of a scam more successful and grandly scaled than he ever dreamed of. When he killed himself in prison, William Von Becker left an unholy mess behind. The Ponzi scheme he'd run for years had finally blown up, leaving the latest investors holding the bag. The rifts between his widow, Olivia, and her children--foreign-exchange expert Binks, prodigal son Virgil, Asperger's-stricken Wyatt and daughter Morgan--make it hard for them to present a united front about anything. And they're stung by accusations that as much as $3 billion is still unaccounted for. On the theory of setting a thief to catch a thief, Virgil hires Stafford to look for the missing money. Jason's preliminary inquiries among William Von Becker's associates and staffers don't turn up the loot, but they do reveal another important player: Colombian banker Tulio Botero Castillo, who claims that Von Becker's haul included $100 million in negotiable bearer bonds. Castillo's under pressure from some unsavory types with quick trigger fingers to recover the bonds, and he's more than happy to share the pressure with Stafford. Soon, the tax attorney whose murder kicks off the tale is joined by two other victims, whose deaths do not bring Stafford any closer to his goal. Meanwhile, his poisonous ex-wife, Evangeline Oubre, has left Louisiana for a stay in New York. She says it's to make amends under her 12-step program and spend some time with her son, whose autism makes him a handful for either parent; Stafford's lover, Skeli, predicts darkly that she's looking to reunite with Stafford after the spectacular flameout of her second marriage. Any way you look at it, the man has serious problems. As densely plotted as Sears' strong debut (Black Fridays, 2012), with complications that keep mounting in the race to the final curtain. A particularly nice touch is the subordination of the scheming suspects to Stafford's troubled, loving relationship with his son.

Kirkus Reviews