Company Man: A Novel

Written by Joseph Finder

Narrated by Scott Brick

Joseph Finder's New York Times bestseller Paranoia was hailed by critics as "jet-propelled," the "Page Turner of the Year," and "the archetype of the thriller in its contemporary form."

Now Finder returns with Company Man - a heart-stopping thriller about ambition, betrayal, and the price of secrets.

Nick Conover, the son of a factory worker, is the CEO of a major corporation in a company town. Nick, once the most admired man in Fenwick, Michigan, is now, having presided over massive layoffs, the most despised. A single parent since the recent death of his wife, he's struggling to insulate his ten-year-old daughter and angry sixteen-year-old son from the town's hostility. When his family is threatened by a nameless stalker, events spin quickly out of control and Nick is faced with a dead body and damning circumstances. To protect his family, he must cover up the homicide with the help of his old friend and corporate security director. Now Audrey Rhimes, a police investigator with an agenda of her own, is determined to connect Nick to the homicide. In the meantime, Nick begins to unravel a web of intrigue within his own corporation, involving his closest colleagues, that threatens to gut the company and bring him down with it. With everything he spent his life working for hanging in the balance, Nick Conover discovers that life at the top is just one small step away from a long plunge to the bottom.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Macmillan Audio
• Release date: Apr 6, 2005
• ISBN: 9781593976989

Joseph Finder

Joseph Finder is the author of several New York Times bestselling thrillers, including Buried Secrets, High Crimes, Paranoia and the first Nick Heller novel, Vanished. Killer Instinct won the International Thriller Writers Award for Best Thriller, and Company Man won the Barry and Gumshoe Awards for Best Thriller. High Crimes was the basis of the Morgan Freeman/Ashley Judd movie, and Paranoia was the basis for 2013 film with Liam Hemsworth, Harrison Ford and Gary Oldman. Born in Chicago, Finder studied Russian at Yale and Harvard. He was recruited by the CIA, but decided he preferred writing fiction. A member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Association for Former Intelligence Officers, he lives in Boston, Massachusetts.

Reviews for Company Man

[antoncipri · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I loved this book.

[judiex · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Stratton Corporation was a leading furniture manufacturing company based in Michigan. While its products were premium quality, it was facing competition from competitors who were outsourcing some or all of the work. It became part of an out-of-state conglomerate whose main focus was making more money for the stockholders.Nicholas Conover, the newly named CEO, found that one of his first tasks was getting rid of almost half the work force so Stratton could cut costs. In a small town, almost everyone was effected by the cuts, either directly or by knowing someone who was. Nick started finding messages inside his home, located in a gated community. His reports to the police department were basically ignored because many on the staff also knew people who had lost their jobs. His wife had died a year earlier, before he became CEO, leaving him to raise their two children, a sweet ten-year old girl and an angry 16 year-old boy. One day he and his two children came home to find their dog had been viciously murdered.. Again, the police ignored his requests to find the perpetrator and to protect his house.An investigation by a co-worker and friend of his turned up the name of the possible person. His friend gave him a gun which Nick took reluctantly. Soon afterwards he spied the man in his yard and, feeling threatened, shot him. From then on, more and more seemed to go wrong. COMPANY MAN is the story of a man with a conscious getting involved with people with different agendas as he tries to save the jobs of Stratton employees and preserve the company. But he tends to trust the wrong people.Joseph Finder presents important facts about schizophrenia: “The vast majority of patients with schizophrenia have never been violent. They’re one hundred times more likely to commit suicide than homocide.”“...Schizophrenia increases the likelihood of being the victim of a crime.”While the book is well-written and fast-moving, it doesn’t seem likely that a man in his position would be so disconnected with his children after the death of their mother or that their nanny would be so incompetent in recognizing the problems. The book also has too many too short chapters that should have been combined. I doubt that the majority of readers suffer from short attention spans. I always remove one star for that.

[itbgc · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This was an enjoyable read except for the fact that it was too predictable. I guessed early on what was going to happen and, unfortunately, was correct.

[permaswooned · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I really enjoy Joseph Finder. He writes books that are full of suspense and intrigue, but all in a corporate setting. Generally, his protagonists are good guys caught in difficult situations only partly of their own making. He obviously does lots of research to try to get all the details right, and I enjoy the details the way he strings them together. Good read.

[claudia.anderson · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Nick is the CEO of a large corporation but makes so many silly, stupid decisions that is is difficult to believe he can run a company; great idea for a plot but seemed like Finder just made up actions for Nick to fill the rest of the story without thinking out how unplausible those actions would be for a leader
Do not like Scott Brick as a narrator; he always sounds so annoyed