What Would You Do For Money

Eat What You Kill – Ted Scofield (St. Martin’s Press)

As I worked my way through Ted Scofield’s debut financial thriller, Eat What You Kill, I found myself humming along to Canadian rockers the Northern Pikes song The Things I do for Money and the line that goes “the things I do for money I’ll never understand.”

Scofield’s hero/villain Evan Stoess is a trailer park kid who pines for Wall Street riches and is willing to stop at nothing to make that happen. Scofield weaves a classic, familiar tale of as Stoess stands poised on precipice of scoring a solid first step towards his desires, only to have the rug and riches pulled out from under him.

Life is full of second chances and a mysterious Wall Street firm steps up to offer him not only a life line, but a second shot at the prize. What would he do for money? When things don’t go quick as he hoped, Stoess answers the question by taking out a video game developing, cash cow by recreating one of the video wiz’s graphic kill techniques…let’s just say it involves a nail gun and leave it at that.

Scofield knocks it out of the park with this inaugural effort that’s an entertaining mix of high end catalogs, the New York private, jet set and Bret Easton Ellis’ American Psycho with a greatly reduced kill count. High entertainment.