JUNE 2012 - AudioFile
Narrator Henry Leyva sets a fast pace packed with all the high-octane action of a summer movie thriller. In Cooper’s dirty world, wealthy financial firms play by their own rules to ensure that even when investments fail, those with real power don’t lose money. Through their “clawback” system, they get back the money they invested—one way or another. Their enforcers are often ex-military guns for hire, and the best way to stop them is to use one of their own—in this case, Silas Cade. Leyva gives Cade the calm-under-fire personality the military requires of its special operations personnel. The door is left tantalizingly open for future collaborations with Cooper, Leyva, and Cade. S.C. © AudioFile 2012, Portland, Maine
Andrew Gross
"Clawback is smart and savvy, and paced like a bull market rally! Silas Cade is part Jack Reacher, part Seal Team Six in the Madoffian canyons of power and greed."
Craig Johnson
Better than a bank with wheels, Clawback reads like a rollercoaster on a financial graph! Mike Cooper’s debut novel has a narrative that’s breezy and light, kind of like the fire that backdrafts under a door before it blows off the hinges.
Josh Bazell
"Sharp, invigorating and remarkably assured, Mike Cooper's financial thriller Clawback has done the unthinkable: it's made Oliver Stone's Wall Street look downright naïve.”
Thomas Perry
Clawback is a great guilty pleasure. It has vivid but convincing action, a sympathetic protagonist with a specialty we haven't seen before, and plentiful antagonists we all have reason to despise. Buy it.
Brad Thor
"Mike Cooper’s Clawback is fantastic. If Tom Wolfe could channel Robert Ludlum, he would have written this novel. Think Bonfire of the Vanities meets The Bourne Identity and then kick it way, way up. Action, suspense, and tons of insider information. This is my kind of thriller and I can't wait for the next one. If you like Nelson DeMille, you will love Mike Cooper."
Booklist (starred review)
"Cooper, 'a former financial executive,' vividly renders a gossip-fueled world where self-important one-percenters begin to carry guns to protect themselves from murderous “peasants,” anarchists, and jihadists. Clawback has intriguing characters, knowing insights into the Wall Street demimonde, a blistering pace, lots of action, and some over-the-top derring-do that may attract Hollywood."
Booklist
"Cooper, 'a former financial executive,' vividly renders a gossip-fueled world where self-important one-percenters begin to carry guns to protect themselves from murderous “peasants,” anarchists, and jihadists. Clawback has intriguing characters, knowing insights into the Wall Street demimonde, a blistering pace, lots of action, and some over-the-top derring-do that may attract Hollywood."
JUNE 2012 - AudioFile
Narrator Henry Leyva sets a fast pace packed with all the high-octane action of a summer movie thriller. In Cooper’s dirty world, wealthy financial firms play by their own rules to ensure that even when investments fail, those with real power don’t lose money. Through their “clawback” system, they get back the money they invested—one way or another. Their enforcers are often ex-military guns for hire, and the best way to stop them is to use one of their own—in this case, Silas Cade. Leyva gives Cade the calm-under-fire personality the military requires of its special operations personnel. The door is left tantalizingly open for future collaborations with Cooper, Leyva, and Cade. S.C. © AudioFile 2012, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
Silas Cade can field strip a Browning .50-caliber machine gun, and he can parachute from an airplane, but he's done with Iraq and military life and has no interest in hired-gun Blackwater. Instead, Cade reconnoiters Wall Street and uses covert tactics to recover missing millions. In Cooper's debut thriller, ex-special ops Cade has earned his CPA, decided not to bean-count and decided to apply his skill set to become a one-man lost-funds recovery operation. The story begins with a hiccup in Cade's business. Client Thomas Marlett is killed by a sniper, a murder happening at the same time Cade "claws back" Marlett's $10 million from an about-to-be-arrested fraud. In the Wall Street milieu where traders "have long ago left behind law, morality and the social compact," Cade doesn't lack clients. His next, Quint Ganderson, investment-fund managing partner, informs Cade that Marlett's fund was down 78 percent and two other CEOs of poorly performing funds are also recently dead. As Cade searches for the assassin, Clara Dawson inserts herself into his investigation. She's a financial blogger-journalist whose legwork has uncovered the fact Cade's no boring bookkeeper. By mid-tale, Cade's gone hand-to-hand more than once, dodged a shoot-out and arm-wrestled a helicopter before jumping into the Hudson River to save himself. Cooper's characters will probably populate sequels, not only Cade and Clara, but also Johnny, boyhood friend and high-velocity trader; Zeke, a hard-drinking, laconic former special-ops buddy; and Rondo, Clara's roommate and a gay martial arts expert. There's much snappy, half-cynical repartee reminiscent of 1930s Hollywood cinema, including snarks about the necessity of gun control, and a firefight aboard a mega-yacht followed by a jet ski-Zodiac water pursuit. Cooper sets the action in New York City, a locale he has down pat, from neighborhood diners to the only place it's legal to live on your boat. Arm a Hollywood hero with a Beretta and disposable cell, point him at a Gordon Gekko–type, and this book's big screen ready.
