Paranoia

A Novel

By: Joseph Finder

Narrated by: Scott Brick

Length: 12 hrs and 52 mins

Publisher's Summary

Adam Cassidy is twenty-six and a low level employee at a high-tech corporation who hates his job. When he manipulates the system to do something nice for a friend, he finds himself charged with a crime. Corporate Security gives him a choice: prison or become a spy in the headquarters of their chief competitor, Trion Systems. They train him and feed him inside information. Now at Trion, he's a star, skyrocketing to the top. He finds he has talents he never knew he possessed. He's rich, drives a Porsche, lives in a fabulous apartment, and works directly for the CEO. He's dating the girl of his dreams. His life is perfect. All he has to do to keep it that way is betray everyone he cares about and everything he believes in. But when he tries to break off from his controllers, he finds himself in way over his head, where nothing is what it seems and no one can really be trusted. And then the REAL nightmare begins....

©2004 Joseph Finder (P)2004 Audio Renaissance, a division of Holtzbrinck Publishers, LLC

Critic Reviews

"Is it too early to declare Finder's fifth novel the most entertaining thriller of 2004?....A first-rate surprise ending packs a wallop. This novel is the real deal: a thriller that actually will keep readers up way past their bedtimes." (Publishers Weekly)

"A twisting, stealthily plotted story...as a savvy genre piece with built-in momentum, it works just fine...the book weaves a tangled and ingeniously enveloping web." (The New York Times) 

"What keeps the pages turning isn't the suspense, though, as much as it is Finder's detailed portrayal of the Machiavellian world of the mega-corporation and its high-stakes intrigue." (The New York Times Book Review) 

"This thriller is engaging from the opening lines and doesn't let up until the surprising end. Scott Brick narrates flawlessly....This great performance is a perfect fit for the writing." (AudioFile) 

Clever and interesting.

I enjoyed this title very much. It's a clever tale of high-tech intrigue, greed and corporate espionage that's well written, fast paced and has well drawn characters. We are not beaten over the head with the moral lessons too severely, yet they are a bit obviously drawn (hard to avoid it, actually). If you are looking for a truly thought provoking book try the new John le Carre novel. If you want a clever, bright and shiny literary romp then this title is the one for you. Recommended.

Pleasant surprise

I had run out of my "type" of audiobooks to listen to and was going on a long trip. I 'm hooked on a few authors I like and rarely look for someone new.
Found "Paranoia" and decided to take a chance..... What a pleasant surprise. Now I can't wait to listen to more from this author.
contemporary-fresh-lot's of twists... very good

A pleasant surprise!

I've listened to 30 good novels this year. The toughest part about audiobooks, is that you need both a great author/novel, and you need a great narrator. This book delivers on both. Scott Brick brings this novel to life, and Joseph Finder writes a gripping plot with 3-Dimensional characters. This is my first time with a Joseph Finder book, so I was hesitant at first, but once I started listening, I couldn't get to sleep! I normally fall asleep to good books with my 60min Sleep Timer, but I kept resetting the timer every 60min until I realized it was 5AM and I hadn't slept yet! I couldn't believe it. Rest assured, once you start this book, you won't start looking for your next book until you've finished it. Enjoy!

Good corporate espionage thriller

I bought this for a long road-trip and I got so caught up in the story that I took the unusual step of bringing my Ipod into my hotel room and listening to it at night in bed! I love business thrillers, which are pitifully few, since everyone wants to write about detectives, lawyers, or the CIA these days.

Essentially, this book focuses on the actions of an employee of a fictional tech firm who is coerced into spying on a competitor by taking a job with them. His job is to learn all he can about a mysterious, earth-shattering invention the competitor is working on. Corporate espionage, in other words.

Despite my love of the book, and of the twists and turns it takes, I have a few misgivings. The plot conclusion was great, but the final couple of paragraphs were unsatisfying. It's almost as if the author failed to submit the last page of the story to the publisher. Also, the story's hero can be rather stupid at times. Finally, while the character's dad's health issues and bad attitude provided a mildly interesting side story, I think the author spent too much time on the father-son relationship. Just my opinion.

Overall, great book. I hope to find more like it.

3.5 a Better Rating Really

Good story, plot, but not totally plausible. A fun read overall. Just a times hard to swallow. The narrator was excellent, the pace good. The details got a bit beyond reality at times.

Paranoia Is Such Fun!

I loved everything about this book when I read the paper version some years ago. I brought the book in for a co-worker at the time, who told me she was angry at me the next morning as she stayed up all night reading it. So, when I saw it on sale, I figured I'd give it a second go-round in audio.

You can imagine my surprise, when after listening to it and enjoying every moment of it, I read the reviews and realized it was narrated by Scott Brick! He did a great job capturing the brash personality of Adam Cassidy! He really added to the listening experience! (I am not usually a fan but may have to reconsider.)

Short summary? Adam Cassidy is in the tech industry in a boring, going-nowhere type of job. For kicks, he hacks his company's systems to finance a fancy and much too expensive retirement party for a guy on the loading dock. When caught red-handed, he is given a choice of prison or spying for his company by infiltrating their most serious competitor. This is when the fun begins. There is a secondary thread involving Adam's relationship with his abusive, difficult father who is dying of lung disease. It is interesting enough to justify being there.

Basically, it is a tale of corporate espionage laced with bits of humor. It kept me smiling. This is not a subject I would seek out nor would I expect to find it as fun as I did. I am not a suspense junkie, either, but this book kept me reading and nail-biting til the wee hours. Sure, it takes a bit of suspending your reality, but if you are willing to do that, you are in for a very amusing listen.

Highly recommended!

disappointed...not buying into the story

After all of the glowing reviews, I was a little disappointed with the book. I found myself not completely buying into the circumstances in the book. As a result, I didn't get wrapped into the emotions. Perhaps I am unfairly comparing this book to the incredible Robert Ludlum books I have read recently (Jansen Directive, etc). The performance by the narrator is quite good.

A Fun Read

A fun read. Happy, sad and a great ending. A very modern suspense novel. I think everyone can relate with the likable main character. Buy this book or you'll miss a good one.

Hard To Swallow

The plot is completely implausible, the portrayal of life in a big corporation is a wild caricature, the lead chacacter is a shallow, dishonest underacheiver, and most of the other characters are unpleasant or downright nasty. Downbeat and cynical, but moderately entertaining if you don't mind being a little depressed by its portrayal of the darker side of human nature.

A Willing Suspension of Disbelief ...

... although normally a criterion reserved for sci-fi, is a prerequisite to enjoy this book. It's an attempt at high-tech fiction but the scenarios and characters' actions are so implausible that it borders on science fiction. The book begins with an action on the part of the protaganist, Adam Cassidy, that is pretty unbelievable. Amazingly, this act is never really questioned, challenged, or explained but it forms the basis for the entire plot development. As the plot develops, its twists are fairly predictable and it's not too hard to see the ending coming from about two-thirds of the way through the book. When the ending does come, though, it is ultimately rather unsatisfying and the literal end of the book is so abrupt that one would think the author ran out of paper for his typewriter ... or space on is hard drive, or whatever. I was left wondering what happened to the characters after the ending.
All that said, though, I did not have any trouble hanging in through the end of the book. For all its predictability and cardboard-cutout characters, the plot is somewhat engaging and interesting. The author drops in a few realistic industry terms, leading me to believe he was either employed in high-tech at one time or did enough research in the area to at least know some of the lingo.
I found the reader to be acceptable, not the best but not the worst either; good voicing and dynamics. Not hard to listen to.
Overall I would say this was a bit of a guilty pleasure to listen to. I could tell that it was bad but didn't mind finishing it through to the end and even enjoyed it a little. But readers who are insistent on plausibility and well-researched characters and scenarios (think Michael Crichton or Dan Brown) will likely be disappointed.

querky

very american, techy book. Good fun, plenty of suspense. Quite original. I like the way it is written in the first person. He tells it with hindsight, and he knows what the outcome is before the story starts, although we have to wait till the end.

Cheesey but enjoyable!

An easy and fun listen with an outlandish plot of industrial espionage. I enjoyed it.