I’ve always loved a good corporate thriller—people with little in common thrown together, then mixed with stress, money, power—and what do you know? You’ve got yourself a recipe for disaster. Spoiler alert: it’s going to be delicious (and calorie-free!). I’ll admit that in real life, I tend to be a good little worker-bee, but, give me an office thriller and I’m out there chanting, “Stick it to the man!” Because that’s part of the beauty of this subgenre; the true villain always winds up being corporations themselves. They’re big, greedy, impersonal and, hey, they never provide as good of health insurance as we’d like, am I right?
My new book, Whisper Network, follows four women who have worked at Truviv, Inc. for years. The sudden death of their CEO means their boss, a man who has always been surrounded by….whispers will take over the entire company. When the women decide to take a stand, they set in motion a catastrophic shift in the office. Lies will be uncovered, secrets revealed and not everyone will survive. (Let’s just say things get out of hand, shall we?)
With everyone’s livelihoods on the line, corporate life breeds the perfect powder keg primed for combustion. From Cristina Alger to Dave Eggers, these stories of crime in the cubicle next door will have you sneaking an extra break and obsessing at the water cooler. Something tells me HR is going to be working overtime…
The Darlings by Cristina Alger
A former analyst at Goldman Sachs and a Big Law attorney, Cristina Alger is one of my favorite office thriller novelists to recommend. Her first book, The Darlings, follows Merrill Darling, daughter of a billionaire financier and her husband, attorney Paul Ross. It’s what I like to think of as aspirational turned upside down. A financial investigation and a scandal combined with competing loyalties, this one had my personal stress level at a ten up until the very last page.
Biglaw by Lindsay Cameron
As a corporate lawyer myself, I’m a sucker for any story that takes place behind the shiny glass doors of a law firm, institutions that are notoriously formal, hierarchical and cut throat. Biglaw highlights two of my favorite aspects of workplace thrillers: big salaries and bigger egos. In the book, Mackenzie Corbett is working at a whiteshoe Manhattan firm, her dream job, even if it means putting up with backstabbing colleagues on little-to-no sleep. Just as she is competing to secure a prestigious secondment, she finds herself the subject of a career-ending investigation. Is it any surprise she’s willing to do anything and everything to try to save her dream job?
The Circle by Dave Eggers
The dystopian bent in The Circle feels like a natural turn to take for the workplace thriller. This book makes villains out of not only lecherous coworkers but of big, bad Corporate America itself. The main character, Mae, takes a job at mega internet company, The Circle, which runs out of an ultra hip, modern campus. Think Google or Apple campuses on speed. The Circle pushes complete transparency. Everyone can and will be recorded at all times with nothing erased…ever. “Secrets are lies” and “privacy is theft” the Circle tells us. The thrills and chills come as the ugly side of idealism is exposed and the world of The Circle turns inevitably claustrophobic. Trust me, you will hug your laptop and thank god for password protection.
The Bonfire of Vanities by Tom Wolfe
Tom Wolfe’s Bonfire has to be one of the quintessential Wall Street books of the 1980s, a time rife with Wall Street stories. In it, Manhattan bond trader, Sherman McCoy is wealthy and successful, but kept on a tight leash by his golden handcuffs—a.k.a. a fancy apartment, a fancy mistress, the lifestyle of the rich and famous. But his life starts to rapidly unravel when he’s involved in a hit and run in the Bronx, a case, which, when taken up by a washed-up journalist and an ambitious prosecutor, becomes a firebrand for race, social class and ambition. Warning: reading this will have your stomach in knots, so expect to chase it with an Alka Seltzer.
The Assistants by Camille Perri
This one has shades of The Devil Wears Prada but with a little more…crime. The characters in this book are executive assistants to the rich and powerful, existing in close proximity to all that dough and influence, but without actually having any themselves. But, what if they could have it? Tina is the assistant to a high-powered CEO when an error in an expense report offers her the opportunity to pay off her loans without anyone the wiser. Of course, the perfect plan isn’t as perfect as it seems and her seemingly tiny indiscretion blows up big time. Good luck, Tina!
Force of Nature by Jane Harper
This book will make you think twice about going on next year’s corporate retreat. A woman goes missing in the midst of a weekend of team-building exercises and it turns out not only did she not have the rosiest of relationships with her coworkers (#relatable), but she also was onto some less than savory financial behavior by the company’s CEO. Harper revisits Aaron Falk, who is one of my favorite book detectives and some readers might remember from the book, The Dry, which—bonus points—will soon be a movie starring Eric Bana. So, jump on the bandwagon before it’s cool. Actually, wait, sorry it already is cool, but do it anyway.
Bad Blood by John Carreyrou
Technically a nonfiction entry onto the list, but hear me out because it reads just like any of the best corporate thrillers and just happens to have the benefit of being completely true. I could not put this book down. Carreyrou reports on Elizabeth Holmes, a supposedly brilliant Stanford dropout who is poised to revolutionize the medical industry with her nano blood testing technology. The only problem is…the technology doesn’t actually work. Billions of dollars in play, fraud, reputational ruin, and top-notch storytelling, this one has stuck with me long after the last page.
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