Killer Instinct by Joseph Finder

Killer Instinct by Joseph Finder

My rating: 1 of 5 stars



Jacket Blurb:  Jason Steadman is a thirty-year-old sales executive living in Boston and working for a electronics giant, a competitor to Sony and Panasonic. He's a witty, charismatic guy who's well liked at the office, but he lacks the "killer instinct" necessary to move up the corporate ladder. To the chagrin of his ambitious wife, it looks as if his career has hit a ceiling. Jason's been sidelined.

But all that will change one evening when Jason meets Kurt Semko, a former Special Forces officer just back from Iraq. Looking for a decent pitcher for the company softball team, Jason gets Kurt, who was once drafted by the majors, a job in Corporate Security. Soon, good things start to happen for Jason - and bad things start to happen to Jason's rivals. His career suddenly takes off. He's an overnight success
Only too late does Jason discover that his friend Kurt has been secretly paving his path to the top by the most "efficient" - and ruthless - means available. After all, Kurt says, "Business is war, right?"
But when Jason tries to put a stop to it, he finds that his new best friend has become the most dangerous enemy imaginable. And now it's far more than just his career that lies in the balance.

Read as an audiobook.  Not entirely enthused about about the narrator - he was the voice for a couple of Brad Meltzer books I bounced off of.  Personally, I find that he makes the main characters sound whiny, which is hard to overlook.

Not sure what to think about this book - quite a bit different from the police and detective thrillers which I'm used to and prefer.  The book revolves around Jason, who is trying to sell plasma TV's in a cutthroat corporate world and finds nearly everything going his way.  He comes from a working class upbringing, his beautiful and gorgeous wife is dethroned upper crust - she wants the big house and fancy cars and $2800 baby pram.  It's when things begin to look up that Jason realizes he's getting a bit more "help" from a new friend than he anticipated.

Things begin a steady spiral around the drain the higher Jason climbs the corporate ladder.  His wife is having a difficult and tenuous pregnancy, a co-workers starts to question how Jason got where he was, and as events unfold, Jason begins to realize just how much of an enemy a friend can be. 

A very slow moving thriller, a main character who makes stupid decisions, and ultimately left me bored rather than engaged. I set the audiobook aside with two disks (maybe three?) to go listen to something else and I'm not sure I'll pick it back up again.

As of today (9/5/14), DNF.



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