The Patriots' Club » (Reprint)

Christopher Reich was born in Tokyo in 1961. A graduate of Georgetown University and the University of Texas at Austin, he worked in Switzerland before returning to the United States to pursue a career as a novelist. The bestselling author of four other acclaimed novels, Numbered Account, The Runner, The First Billion, and The Devil’s Banker, he lives in California with his wife and children.

Thomas Bolden grew up on the streets, his childhood a blur of fragmented memories. But now he s managed to put his past behind him, find the woman he wants to share his life with, and carve out a successful career on Wall Street. Until, in the blink of an eye, his world is turned upside down. A bizarre kidnapping sends him fleeing for his life, his face everywhere on the TV news, and a violent, shadowy organization is framing him for crimes he did not commit.

Desperately trying to get back to where he was just a day before, Bolden must re-learn the survival skills of his hardscrabble boyhood. But as Bolden with just eleven dollars in his pocket and hunters all around him survives one violent, harrowing hour after another, he makes a series of startling discoveries: about a mysterious woman wanted for murder about an astounding secret rooted in history, among the country s Founding Fathers and families about a conspiracy lurking in the darkest corners of corporate America...

Publishers Weekly

Thomas Bolden, successful 32-year-old investment banker and Harlem Boys Club Foundation trustee, has come a long way from his turbulent childhood on the mean streets of Chicago. But his street smarts surface at the start of Reich's action-packed but convoluted latest (after Numbered Account), when Bolden chases a pair of muggers through Manhattan's financial district after they rob his girlfriend, Jenny Dance. They abduct him at gunpoint, but after a perplexing interrogation by members of a mysterious clan, a narrow escape reunites him with Jenny. Bolden already knows too much, though, and the organization of the novel's title-a centuries-old secretive order of powerful lawyers, businessmen and politicians convened to preserve political special interest initiatives that the country's founding fathers defended-soon systematically dismantle Bolden's life. He and a newly pregnant Jenny run for their lives, tracked at every turn by the well-connected "club," which is headed by retired detective Francois Guilfoyle. While they each investigate the clandestine group, a flurry of politically fueled machinations unfolds, setting the stage for the obligatory showdown. Reich's conspiracy thriller eventually loses the momentum needed to deliver on the tight suspense it promises. (July) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.