Marie Astor

Janet Maple, graduate of Columbia Law School, four years in the DA's office, with a prized job in the investigations office, along with a handsome boyfriend, Alex, working alongside her, thought she was on her way to the promotion and the career she wanted, bagging Wall Street bad guys.

Then Alex gets the promotion, she gets laid off, and she's struggling to support herself and her dog, Baxter, and find a new job without using her ex-boyfriend as a reference. When her oldest and once closest friend, Lisa Foley, calls her with an off of a job as Assistant General Counsel at Bostoff Securities, she accepts. She's working on Wall Street instead of hunting Wall Street bad guys, but she can play a role in keeping Bostoff Securities on the right side of the law, right?

It's not long before she realizes there's something wrong at Bostoff. Their five biggest customers are hedge funds with dubious reputations, and their documentation seems to be incomplete--ownership data, for instance, is missing. Yet her ability to investigate is limited, because most of the legal work is done by outside counsel Tom Wyman. Even her friend and boss, Lisa, the General Counsel, has very little real work. Why was Janet even hired?

Dennis Walker, undercover Treasury investigative agent, is working at Bostoff as an IT specialist, under the name Dean Snider, because Treasury has questions about Bostoff, too. The normally suave and perfectly groomed Walker is posing as a dorky IT guy. It grates on him, but the job is his main concern--his only concern, until he meets Janet Maple.

What follows is a complicated interaction, where Janet, once burned, likes "Dean" but is set on avoiding romance at work, and Dennis likes Janet, but can't get involved brecause of his job--except that he also soon realizes that Janet might be the inside source he needs.

They move together and apart, repeatedly, and meanwhile we get to know the Bostoff brothers, Jonathan and Paul, sons of the largely retired founder, Hank Bostoff, and more complicated than one might expect from their assigned roles in this story.

It's a fun story, and I like the characters and the plot, yet it never completely gelled for me. Also, the cute dog on the cover, Janet's dog Baxter, does arrive at the end of the book unscathed, but also barely plays a role in the story at all, which did disappoint me. Honestly, I was in need of a dog in a story, and clearly didn't do enough initial scouting of the story.

It is enjoyable, though, even if not very deep or entirely solid.

I bought this book.… (altro)

I loved how this story came together effortlessly. It was a little verbose in places but I didn’t find that a distraction. In fact, I enjoyed the feeling of complexity by the in depth explanations. In other words, more word for me here.
The characters were great and fit the plot. There was a good balance between the plot and characters with enough drama to move things along.
Great start to a series and I look forward to read more from this author. For more of my reviews, and author interviews, see my blog at www.thespineview.com.… (altro)

Marie Astor has written a series of novels starring Janet Maple. This is the first one, "To Catch a Bad Guy" and this novel introduces the characters of Janet and Dennis who it appears are in the subsequent novels.

Janet, after several years working in the prosecution's investigative division is lay-offed by her then boyfriend of several years. Janet goes to work with her old childhood best friend as general counsel at an investment firm. While working there Janet feels as if some things are amiss with the running of the firm, however, when she meets Dennis, an IT technician at the firm she starts to realize that her initial feelings about the firm are very true.

First the positives. Ms. Astor explanation about IPOs and hedge funds shows that she definitely has some background in these financial matters. I know that some reviewers said they found typos and grammatical issues in the novel, but I honestly didn't find that in this novel.

However, I ended up ranking this only two and half stars since there was some definite issues with this novel.

1) The most important issue for me and why I ended up disliking this novel is that though this was touted as a Janet Maple novel, it really should have been called Janet Maple and other people. The points of view for this novel changed constantly. Sometimes it was Janet, Dennis, Lisa (Janet's best friend growing up) or one of the Bostoffs (heads of the investment firm).

In the end I realized that the main point of view readers received in this novel was actually Jon Bostoff. We get to hear more about his upbringing, his insecurities, his life than we did Janet's. If the novel was purporting him as the main character that would be fine, but this was supposedly a Janet Maple novel and I found myself getting distracted by the constant back and forth between characters.

2)The novel was often quite stilted when it came to dialogue between characters. I don't know why most novels these days have characters just thinking thoughts all of the time. When you get through the novel and realize that most of the characters often do not talk to each other it is quite maddening.

3)The attraction between Janet and Dennis was just not there for me. I could tell the author was trying to set it up that way but I honestly did not feel any sparks between them based on the writing. Frankly I really didn't care for the character of Dennis and hope that Janet stays away from him in the next novel.

4) There needs to be more descriptions of things besides people's clothing and hairstyles. This novel takes place in New York. Well I didn't get that from reading this novel. This novel could have taken place anywhere in the world due to the author not providing enough descriptions.

In the end though this novel definitely has an interesting premise I don't think I will buy any more novels featuring this character.… (altro)