Book Review: The Day Trader

Reviewed By: Harriet Klausner

The Day Trader     Amazon US PB Amazon US HC Amazon Canada PB Amazon Canada HC
Stephen Frey
Class/Genre:   Mystery   Financial   Thriller
Ballantine, Jan 2002, $24.95, 352 pp.

In Northern Virginia, Russell Lake informs employee Augustus McKnight that he monitors computer usage and is well aware of the latter’s personal day trading over company equipment. Russell informs Augustus that he expects to be handed over half the earnings of last night’s investment or be fired from his job analyzing paper product sales in Maryland supermarkets. Not long afterward, Russell’s wife Mel informs him she wants a divorce as she has found someone else, her boss Frank Taylor. He injures her wrist and she scratches his neck.

Augustus makes a nine-fold profit from his one day ten thousand dollar investment. However, the murder of Mel leaves Russell wealthy as the beneficiary of her million-dollar life insurance policy and enables him to become a full time day trader. At night, Augustus looks into Mel’s violent death and uncovers a shocker that his wife worked at a mob operated strip joint. As he gets closer to the truth, Augustus may have placed himself in danger.

THE DAY TRADER is an exciting amateur sleuth novel that is not a financial thriller as the tale only uses day trading in a minor side role. The story line jumps from scene to scene so that the audience never quite gets its footing fully into the plot, yet readers will continue on because of the non-stop action. Stephen Frey provides an exhilarating murder mystery for those readers who delight in hopping from one action scenario to anther.

Harriet Klausner

Reprinted with permission. Do Not repost without permission from the author, Harriet Klausner