Killer Instinct: A Novel

Joseph Finder

Apr 2007 · Sold by St. Martin's Press

About this ebook

Jason Steadman is a thirty-year-old sales executive living in Boston and working for an 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, as 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. A riveting tale of ambition, intrigue, and the price of success, Killer Instinct is Joseph Finder at his best.

*San Francisco Chronicle
** Pittsburgh Post Gazette

Ratings and reviews

I suppose this is a nice book for a long boring flight. The characters in this book lack a lot of personality, there are way too many inconsistencies and "coincidences". My intelligence felt insulted all the way through. The good thing, however, is that the book is written in a quite simple English (I'm reading English literature for improving my language skills), the flow is intense, and even though you feel like the author is neglecting his readers' memory and a sense of logic, you can't just cease from reading and keep turning the pages until you're through. Note to myself: when a certain relatively new writer publishes a best-seller (Paranoia, in Joseph Finder's case), it would be a wise thing to read the bestseller first, rather than starting from some mid range books with no particular appeal, which you will forget as soon as you turn the last page.

I didn't like this book as much as Finder's other novels. The "villain" was very transparent and creepy (perhaps written to be deliberately so) and the ending was so-so.

Hard to put down once you pick it up.

About the author

Joseph Finder is the author of several New York Times bestselling thrillers, including Buried Secrets, High Crimes, Paranoia and the first Nick Heller novel, Vanished. Killer Instinct won the International Thriller Writers Award for Best Thriller, and Company Man won the Barry and Gumshoe Awards for Best Thriller. High Crimes was the basis of the Morgan Freeman/Ashley Judd movie, and Paranoia was the basis for 2013 film with Liam Hemsworth, Harrison Ford and Gary Oldman. Born in Chicago, Finder studied Russian at Yale and Harvard. He was recruited by the CIA, but decided he preferred writing fiction. A member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Association for Former Intelligence Officers, he lives in Boston, Massachusetts.