Dead Cat Bounce (review)

Four years ago, Jonah Lightbody's emotionally distant father, a trader at the London firm Helsby, Cattermole, took Jonah to the office on Take Your Child to Work day. There twelve-year-old Jonah was rescued from utter boredom by the exuberant Baron, an ultra aggressive hotshot trader who's the antithesis of Mr. Lightbody. By the end of the morning, the Baron has put Jonah to work entering trade data in the computer and has invited him back for more. Dad is livid and forbids it, which only makes Jonah more determined to return. Little does Jonah know that there's some ugly history between his father and the Baron, and that the next four years of the Baron's clandestine mentoring are merely a set-up to lure the now sixteen-year-old Jonah into the firm and use him as a cover for a wildly illegal trading scam. Bennett sets his tale at the height of the banking meltdown/bailout crisis and spins a first-rate thriller around an evil global organization, Apollyon, that exploits (or possibly orchestrates) disasters and crises to manipulate the stock market and make a killing. It's a high-stakes game, and the lives of the two-bit players like Jonah and his father are completely expendable, as they learn when Apollyon has them tracked by hit men all the way to a remote conservation park in Africa, where an explosive showdown sets the stage for a sequel. Teens who consider playing National Stock Market Simulation the highlight of their school day, or anyone who enjoys a good conspiracy theory, will devour this.