Successor » (Reprint)

Stephen Frey is a managing director at a private equity firm. He previously worked in mergers and acquisitions at J.P. Morgan and as a vice president of corporate finance at an international bank in Manhattan. Frey is the bestselling author of The Power Broker, The Protégé, The Chairman, Shadow Account, Silent Partner, The Day Trader, Trust Fund, The Insider, The Legacy, The Inner Sanctum, The Vulture Fund, and The Takeover. He lives in Florida.

Make-or-break decisions involving millions of dollars are all in a day’s work for Christian Gillette, chairman of Everest Capital, New York’s most renowned private equity firm. He’s taken on the toughest, most powerful, and often most dangerous adversaries and prevailed–all the while honing his skill for being cool under fire, literally. But now Gillette will be put to the ultimate test. He’s offered the chance to seal a deal unlike any other, one that goes beyond boardrooms, balance sheets, and even Everest itself–one that will leave its mark on history.

Gillette is no stranger to Jesse Wood, the first African American president of the United States, having been Wood’s chosen running mate in his historic bid for the White House. Though still slightly upset over being dropped from the ticket at the eleventh hour, Gillette’s not about to ignore the chief executive’s summons to a top-secret meeting at Camp David. There, Wood drops a bombshell: The president of Cuba is dead. Cuba’s communist regime has kept the dictator’s demise hush while it races to fill the power vacuum. And the United States is poised to support a cabal of Cuban professionals plotting a coup. The President wants Gillette to meet with the conspirators and size up the chances for a successful capitalist revolution. But by no means can his mission be traced back to the White House. If anything goes wrong, Gillette is on his own.

And if certain people have their way, something will go wrong. For the conspiracy to liberate Cuba isn’t the only one afoot. Enemies in high places, who will go to any lengths to wreak revenge on Gilletteand to unseat President Wood, have set in motion a campaign of deception, sabotage, and murder whose shockwaves will resonate from the streets of Havana to the Oval Office. But for Gillette, who has just named his alluring and ambitious protégé, Allison Wallace, as his successor at Everest, the greatest peril may lie much closer to home.

The Successor is blue-chip Stephen Frey, marshaling his flawless instincts for edgy, provocative, breathtaking suspense with a master’s touch.

Publishers Weekly

Christian Gillette, the hero of Frey's timely thriller, which centers on the possible death of Fidel Castro, runs a huge private investment firm, Everest Capital, but finds lots of time to plunge into politics and international adventure when not shuffling vast amounts of cash around. Jesse Wood, the first African-American president, calls Gillette to Camp David to ask him to find out, almost singlehandedly, if Castro has indeed died and, if so, to help a liberal bunch of non-Communist Cubans take back their country. Gillette, who was Wood's first choice as vice-president until he decided to pick a more politically seasoned running mate, agrees despite the considerable danger involved. "Maybe it would satisfy his growing hunger to do something bigger, something more important, than manage Everest," Frey (The Power Broker) tells us. Despite some pedestrian prose, the action quickly takes on a life of its own, aided by a sadly credible wealth of details about what it takes to survive in Cuba. (Jan.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.