''Reckless'' is the fourth solo-authored book by

Andrew Gross Andrew Gross (born 1952) is an American author of thriller novels including four ''New York Times'' bestsellers. He is best known for his collaborations with suspense writer James Patterson. Gross's books feature close family bonds, relationships ...

. ''Reckless'' debuted on the NY Times Bestsellers list the week of May 23, 2010. ''Reckless'' is the third in his series with investigator Ty Hauck, hero of ''The Dark Tide'' and ''Don’t Look Twice''. Hauck follows the threads of a brutal murder of a Connecticut family into a conspiracy that directly reflects the state of the world financial markets and the axiom of “

too big to fail "Too big to fail" (TBTF) and "too big to jail" is a theory in banking and finance that asserts that certain corporations, particularly financial institutions, are so large and so interconnected that their failure would be disastrous to the great ...

.”

Setting

Reckless is set in circa 2009

Greenwich, Connecticut Greenwich (, ) is a New England town, town in southwestern Fairfield County, Connecticut, United States. At the 2020 United States Census, 2020 census, the town had a total population of 63,518. The largest town on Connecticut's Gold Coast (Conne ...

in the post

Madoff Bernard Lawrence Madoff ( ; April 29, 1938April 14, 2021) was an American fraudster and financier who was the admitted mastermind of the largest Ponzi scheme in history, worth about $64.8 billion. He was at one time chairman of the NASDAQ s ...

era. The story portrays the financial industry in the aftermath of

Great Recession The Great Recession was a period of marked general decline, i.e. a recession, observed in national economies globally that occurred from late 2007 into 2009. The scale and timing of the recession varied from country to country (see map). At ...

and the

subprime mortgage crisis The United States subprime mortgage crisis was a multinational financial crisis that occurred between 2007 and 2010 that contributed to the Financial crisis of 2007–2008, 2007–2008 global financial crisis. It was triggered by a large decline ...

Story

Ty Hauck learns of the murder of a close personal friend April Glassman along with her husband Marc and their daughter. The murder was clearly meant to look like one of a recent string of home invasions, but very little about this murder parallels the other home invasions. The murder of Marc Glassman, a trader at a major brokerage, has an immediate and dramatic effect on world financial markets. Coincidentally, Glassman had gone out of his way to violate company policy, having dramatically over leveraged his positions. His murder brings down one of Wall Street's oldest and most respected brokerages. Hauck has started a new job with Talon, a security firm whose largest client is Reynolds Ried, “a Wall Street icon.” Merrill Simons, the ex-wife of Reynolds Rieds' CEO, hires Hauck to check up on her suspicions about her new love interest Dani Thibault. As Hauck investigates Thibault he begins to see clues that connect Thibault to the murder of Marc Glassman and the apparent suicide of James Donovan, another over extended trader from a different firm. In Washington, Treasury agent Naomi Blum watches millions of dollars in suspicious bank transfers. Her research leads her to follow the same trail as Hauck. Hauck and Blum team up to unravel evidence that all connects back to Dani Thibault. Their search takes them to Serbia and leads back to London to find Marty al-Bashir, the chief investment officer of the Royal Saudi Partnership. As witnesses are quickly silenced in a string of murders, the trail leads all the way back to the Secretary of the Treasury in Washington and Peter Simons, the CEO of Reynold's Reid.

References

{{reflist 2010 American novels American thriller novels Novels set in Connecticut Novels set in London Greenwich, Connecticut William Morrow and Company books