The Candidate by Daniel Pembrey

I received a copy of this book from the publisher and Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

If you have two or three hours and would like an enjoyably way to fill the time, I whole heartedly recommend you open your Kindle and read The Candidate by Daniel Pembrey.

This past New Year’s Day turned out to be cold (for Florida), dark, rainy, and dreary so I decided to curl up in my favorite lounge chair with two of my dogs and my cat for a quite afternoon of reading.  I am so glad that I decided to read The Candidate.  After just a few paragraphs, I found the work to be so engrossing that I was able to ignore the animals vying for my attention.

The Candidate by Daniel Pembrey is a fast-paced novella suspense/thriller for Kindle.  Daniel Pembrey manages to keep the tension building to a totally unforeseen and very surprising climax, which you must read the book to discover for yourself. 

In the first few pages, Daniel Pembrey starts setting the stage for his tension building story in much the same way as some of my favorite mystery writers and film noir classics begin.  The protagonist, Nick Thorneycraft, wakes up in his apartment on Sunday morning with a hangover, a pair of women’s knickers on the floor, a couple of blond hairs on the side of the bed he normally doesn’t sleep on, and no memory of the previous evening.  To make matters worse, he finds a mark on his neck he initially believes to be a love bite until his landlord, a retired pharmacist, mentions that it looks like he had a topical treatment applied to the area.

Nick, a 35-year old executive headhunter, is still within the six-month probationary period with a Luxembourg firm that provides payment processing systems to banks and other institutions.  In the short period of time he has been with this firm, he has had the need for tight security drummed into his head.  The events of the previous night begin to raise his concerns over the possibility of a potential security breach.

Claire, a beautiful blonde and Nick’s ex-girl friend, works for an executive search firm in London.  She was instrumental in helping Nick to get the job as well as encouraging him to take the position.  Given that Nick has had only limited HR experience since he had only worked as a sports writer and temp recruiter; he doesn’t appear to be a likely candidate for the position he holds.  This made me wonder how he got the position unless there was considerable intervention by influential individual(s) and/or there was an ulterior motive.

Even so, Nick has been tasked with finding a candidate to fill the extremely important position of head of the newly created Russia and Eastern European (REE) branch of the firm.  This position is tied to a potentially lucrative buyout of the firm by Xanant, a Russian state-owned payment processing company looking at moving into the Western European market.  Nick’s coworkers who have been with the firm long enough to have stock options would be in line to make a tidy profit if the buyout goes through.

When Nick arrived at his office later that Sunday, his boss asked him to follow-up on Yekaterina (Kate) Novakovich’s LinkedIn Curriculum Vitae.  Kate turns out to be a blonde Russian beauty with a doctorate from Harvard who is currently working for one of Moscow’s largest banks.  Nick, however, gets a feeling of vague familiarity when he viewed her LinkedIn photo.  This starts to make him suspicious of her and to think she might be the women he was out with the night before.

When Nick sends Kate an e-mail regarding the position, he gets a very rapid response.  Kate tells Nick she wants to apply for the position, has had several offers, and would like to be interviewed as soon as possible.  After Nick speaks with his supervisor, he gets back with Kate and sets the interviews up for the next day.  Although Kate appears to have bulletproof credentials, it appears to Nick that her selection for the REE position is being inexplicably rushed through without a background check.

The events unfold against a backdrop of political unrest in Russia associated with an upcoming presidential election and financial scandals linked to President Igor Strokan, who is running for re-election.  With hints that Igor Strokan’s offshore funds were managed through banking interests in Luxembourg including the possibility that Nick’s firm could have been involved along with the possibility that the firm may be bought out by the Russians, Nick finds himself in a whirlpool of intrigue and a heap of trouble as he tries to sort out what happened during his missing hours and find out the identity of the women he was with. 

The ending comes hurdling toward you like a run away freight train and then abruptly halts as if the train slammed into a wall.  I was left with many questions and a desire for more of a resolution.

With all of the interesting characters, the side plots, fast paced action, and misdirection, there just too much happening and not enough pages in a novella to fully develop all of it.  This novella cries out to become a novel. 

I believe that Daniel Pembrey is going to be one of those writers we hear a lot of good things about.  I look forward to reading other works by him.