False Positive

by Philip Jolowicz

The author of Walls of Silence returns with a gripping and eerily of-the-moment new novel that will cement his reputation as a titan of the business thriller. As a senior regulatory attorney with Eastern Trust Bank in New York, Alec Mayne embodies all the risk-averse qualities of his calling. But a medical condition suffered by his wife, and Alec's own desperation to keep her in the face of keen unspoken rivalry from his old college friend, prompts him to take the risk of his life. When the flamboyant and maverick Professor Harvey Aldous, chairman of a major biotech client of Eastern Trust, is exposed as a cheat and disappears leaving his company in tatters, Alec knows that his gamble has disastrously backfired. Faced with the official task of investigating the background to the debacle, Alec is weighed down by the conflict of interest he so painfully carries. But the undercurrents of the past are far stronger and more dangerous than even Alec could have imagined and he is compelled to wade through a quicksand of bankers, lawyers, and spurious scientists who will do anything to stop the truth becoming known. The more Alec becomes immersed in a world of contradictions and half truths--in New York and in the mystical grandeur of the Japanese mountain forests--the clearer it becomes that he must, again, take the gamble of his life, this time risking losing everything and everyone dear to him.

448 pages, Hardcover

First published May 3, 2004