Description:

In just three years, CEO Robbie Case has grown Core Communications, a data technology company, from 30 people to over 5,000. Now a $20 billion company made legendary by its sudden success, Core is based on a technology no other company can come close to copying, a revolutionary breakthrough known as “drawing blood from a mainframe.” And Robbie, its 35-year-old CEO, is acclaimed worldwide for his vision, leadership and wealth. Except that all of it is based on a lie. The technology doesn’t work, the finances are built on a Ponzi scheme of stock sales and shell corporations, and Robbie is struggling to keep the company alive, to protect the friends who work for him and all that they’ve built. Each day, Robbie tries to push the catastrophe back a little further, while his employees believe that they are all moving closer to “grace,” the day their stock options vest, when they will be made rich for their faith and loyalty and hard work. The details of the lie are all keyed into a shadowy interface that Robbie calls Shimmer, an omniscient mainframe that hides itself, calculates its own collapse, threatens to outsmart its creator and to reveal the corporation’s illegal, fragile underpinnings. Shimmer is the story of a high-tech crusade nearing its end. The shell game Robbie has created is finally running out of room. ** ### From Publishers Weekly This topical fiction debut from Memphis news publisher Barnes is a cautionary thriller about ambition and corruption in corporate America. Robbie Case, the 35-year-old CEO (and largest shareholder) of Core Communications has managed to grow the business from 30 employees to more than 5,000 in three short years. But his $20 billion company, linking mainframe computers worldwide to the Internet backbone, is built on faulty technology, false promises and questionable finances. Weary of the day when everything inevitably unravels, Case's slow (but accelerating) downward spiral drives the narrative through a number of timely plots, including Ponzi schemes and toxic assets: "The people who worked here, the companies we acquired, the stock we sold-all of it was an unseen disease." Readers may find it difficult, if not impossible, to empathize with Case, but the corporate intrigue should hook anyone fascinated by the collapse of Wall Street and the crimes of Bernie Madoff. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. ### From Booklist Here’s a timely thriller. Robbie Case is CEO of Core Communications, which in three years has grown from a small company to one that employs 5,000 people and has revenue in the multimillions. At 35, Robbie is on top of his profession, acclaimed around the world as a visionary. There’s only one problem: he’s a fraud. Core Communications isn’t a cutting-edge tech company; it’s a giant, incredibly elaborate Ponzi scheme in which revenue from sales of Core’s (fraudulent) technology masks from its clients the fact that the product doesn’t do what Core claims it does. Eventually and inevitably, the whole thing will come crashing down around Robbie—but when? And, further, is there anything he can do to protect his friends and colleagues from financial ruin? Robbie is one of those engagingly conflicted heroes who come along from time to time, an essentially good man who knowingly perpetrated a swindle of epic proportions and who will now do whatever it takes to minimize the damage. Fans of Joseph Finder’s big-business thrillers will definitely want to read this one. --David Pitt