Dead Money by Jakob Kerr
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Mackenzie is a woman lawyer at a venture capital firm. Jameson Danner is an FBI agent in the San Francisco office. When the CEO of a high-tech company that Mackenzie’s firm invests in is murdered, these two end up investigating as a team. Or are they really on the same side? The case appears to be a standard whodunit at first, but spirals into the arcane backstabbing, dog-eat-dog world of Silicon Valley and VC firms. Four stars may be a bit of a stretch, but I enjoyed it enough, subject to my usual reservations below.
As an FBI agent in the San Francisco office for decades and an attorney who worked at high-tech firms (like Mackenzie and the author) and an author of crime novels like Kerr, I am both amused and at times dismayed at how much writers of TV, movies, and books get wrong about the FBI. Of course much of it is intentional since the truth is too mundane. At least Kerr more or less solved the problem of lack of FBI jurisdiction, although with a preposterous angle. A few peccadilloes I feel compelled to point out: an FBI agent would never take a civilian to some of the dangerous situations in the book; agents don’t rack or fiddle with their guns before making the entrance to a dangerous situation. The gun is always loaded, a round chambered and ready to file. They don’t call each other by their titles, like Agent Jones. You don’t call your coworkers Manager Smith and Secretary Andrews, do you? One thing he did get right based upon my time as a manager in a couple of high-tech Silicon Valley firms is that the executives are out solely out for themselves and will gladly shaft fellow employees, investors, clients, the public, and stockholders if it’s to their advantage to do so. I’m so glad I went back to public service after the corporate jobs so I could feel good about my work.