Laurence Shames: Money Talks (USA 2015)

From the Publisher:
From the Foreword:
Money Talks is a novel with a strange past behind it -- and an even stranger present all around it. It's a book that some readers and reviewers have been kind enough to call prophetic. That's a nice word, and very flattering, but let's be clear: It just does not apply here.

Back in 2009 -- when the novel was first published with the title Maxxed Out and under the pseudonym David Collins -- neither I nor anyone else imagined how the world would look less than a decade later, or who would be in charge. I wasn't trying to write a political satire or a predictive dystopia. All I wanted to do was to create an entertaining fiction--part boardroom drama, part dark comedy, part love story, and part murder mystery -- about a New York real-estate mogul with a bullying manner, a head of hair flamboyant enough to match his ego, and a somewhat childish fixation to see his name on very large buildings. I wanted to get inside the head of such a man, to understand what drove him, what kind of bottomless need was behind his unremitting quest for attention and for power. First and foremost, then, Money Talks was intended as a character study of a certain kind of billionaire and a certain kind of villain.

Cut to the present. Read the headlines. Check out the news. I think you'll get the picture. And I hope you'll agree that this novel, while it makes no claim whatsoever to prophecy, has turned out, at the very least, to be weirdly... and even spookily, timely.

Laurence Shames: Money Talks. It Couldn't Happen... Except it Did. CreateSpace Independent Publ., ISBN: 9781508417507 (February, 2015), 313 p., $14.99, eBook $5.99.

David Collins: Maxxed Out (USA 2009)

From the Publisher:
Just when we really need it, a scathingly funny novel that skewers the ego-driven, morally bankrupt world of The Big Deal
Billionaire Robert Maxx is a king in the world of real estate. Prestigious buildings bear his name, the press treats him like royalty, and beautiful women are thrilled to be seen on his arm. Ruthless, bullying, vengeful, and yet, at times, improbably endearing, Maxx both repels and fascinates.

For writer David Collins, things are not so rosy. His novels didn't sell. His marriage fell apart. Scrabbling for a livelihood, he's turned to ghostwriting. When he gets the gig to crank out Maxx's next bestseller, he regards the assignment as nothing more than an easy payday.

But something happens. The storyteller in Collins takes over, and he realizes that this isn't one more hack job. It may be his last chance to write something of real value, reclaim his battered self-respect, and win back the ex-wife he still loves.

Against the all-too-real background of a cratering economy and the end of easy money, things start to fall apart for Maxx. As it becomes clear that his mighty empire was built on lies, hucksterism, and dubious accounting, the stage is set for deadly conflict between a fallen idol desperate to conceal the truth and a writer obsessed with an inside story that only he can tell.

David Collins: Maxxed Out. A Novel. William Morrow, ISBN: 0061456195 (April, 2009), 310 p., $24.99.