By Kellie Coates Gilbert

Series: A Texas Gold Novel #2
ISBN: 9780800722739
Publisher: Revell
Publication Date: 2/17/2014
Format: Paperback
My Rating: 4 Stars

A special thank you to the author and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

A powerful novel and richly layered, Kellie Coates Gilbertreturns with her second installment in the Texas Gold series with WHERE RIVERS PART, a complex and riveting story of redemption and forgiveness.

Another winner by Kellie, crossing many genres – Love her twist of Christian fiction, family, women's fiction, chick-lit, crime, mystery, suspense, relationships, and corporate scandal – all rolled into one gripping tale.

If you have not read the first in the series A WOMAN OF FORTUNE (Texas Gold #1), highly recommend. They can be read as a standalone; however, you will want to read them both, with highly charged and well researched topics ----and Gilbert knows Texas!

Dr. Juliet Ryan has devoted her scientific acumen to corporate America, at Larimar Springs, providing safe drinking water for millions, with plenty of perks. She followed in her well-known father’s footsteps; however, she and her father do not see eye to eye on many subjects and are always arguing. She has never forgiven him for things he has done in the past and cannot get past how her mom seems to overlook, by forgiving and forgetting so easily.

Juliet thinks she has it all, when a scandal breaks out, placing her in the middle of the fallout, putting many lives in danger and risk, while she tries to protect the public and her own reputation. However, with nowhere to turn, she solicits the help from her father to support her and help expose the wrongdoing.

Two people will go down for multiple counts of distribution of adulterated food product, as well as conspiracy and fraud related to the audits. She feels betrayed by those she trusted and struggles to find peace, going back to her mother’s words, “to forgive and let go.”

I really enjoyed Kellie’s inspiration for the novel, as noted in the author’s notes. Sparked by a legal matter in the mid-nineties with the Jack in the Box restaurant with deadly outbreaks, while she was immersed in reviewing the massive amounts of evidence in the litigation. She developed a new appreciate for those charged with maintaining food safety, as well as her husband’s senior management role with the food business.

Hence, Where Rivers Part was born with the question, what if, and how San Antonio fit into the water theme with the Edwards Aquifer, a unique groundwater system, and one of the most prolific artesian aquifers in the world, serving millions. She also relates the water and river to the Living Water in the Bible for hope and forgiveness for an engaging read and much needed emotional healing.

I also enjoy interacting with Kellie via social media, as she is a genuine person, mother, and talented author. If you have not read any of her books, you are missing out - an author to follow!

Fans of Kristin Hannah, Eileen Goudge, and Emilie Richards will enjoy Kellie's highly charged subjects surrounding women with a powerful takeaway message.

Texas Gold #1
A Woman of Fortune 

Read My Review  

By Daniel Palmer

Narrator:  Peter Berkrot

ISBN: 1455854085

Publisher: Brilliance Audio

Publication Date: 01/03/2012

Format:  Audio

My Rating:  5 Stars

Daniel Palmer’s Delirious delivers an intense non-stop suspense debut with corporate espionage on steroids, for a bang up psychological thriller.

Eddie Prescott was world-class software engineer whose life spiraled out of control, a partner of Charlie Giles, who took a wrong turn and ended his life from a bridge.

Charlie Giles sold his successful start-up company to a Boston electronics firm, where he now serves as senior director. As a top software engineer at SoluCent, developing cutting edge InVision, a high profile sophisticated car entertainment system. He is successful, intelligent, and lives to work money and a future.

This all changes when a woman, Anne, a SoluCent marketing employee, tips Giles off that one of his superiors, Jerry Schmidt, will argue against a deal with GM to make InVision standard. When Giles crashes an executive team meeting and confronts Schmidt. Giles cannot prove Anne, works for SoluCent or even exists, and his betrayal leaking secrets to competitor, leads to his firing and is escorted out of the building.

He is astounded and has to prove he was set up. However, as things start stacking up against him, he fears he is falling victim to his family history of schizophrenia after finding a note in his own handwriting listing names of SoluCent executives marked for death. Someone is manipulating him as he is surrounded with deceit, lies, and betrayal, as he turns paranoid, slowly second guessing reality, fiction, or illusion.

Delirious in an acutely disturbed state of mind resulting from illness or intoxication and characterized by restlessness, illusions, and incoherence of thought and speech. This accurately describes Charlie’s state of mind when no one will believe him, and all the evidence is pointing at him as a cold-blooded killer.

In the meantime, readers learn about Joe, his brother (a blogger-loved this) which gave the techno thriller and even more human interest side with family dynamics between the two brothers, and an inside look into mental health issues and caretakers. As Charlie fears of losing his mind intensify and his brother comes to his defense, he has a better understanding of the real brother behind the illness, he has overlooked. (loved Joe's character)!

I have read Palmer’s newer books and making my way backward to read his previous books. Highly recommend Desperate! I actually liked Delirious better than Helpless and Stolen, as Palmer is brilliant as a lover of techno, and psychological thrillers, especially with the wrongly accused desperately proving their innocence.

Best of all love, love Peter Berkrot, (swoon) as he wows the intensity for an outstanding audio performance! (Missed him in Helpless). Hard to believe this is a debut; love the wicked twists of revenge!

By Joanne Fox Phillips

ISBN: 9781938416934
Publisher: River Grove Books
Publication Date: 7/1/14
Pages: 256
Format: Paperback
My Rating: 4 Stars

Joanne Fox Phillips’ REVENGE OF THE CUBE DWELLER, is an engaging tale of one tenacious middle aged woman’s adventure in the corrupt corporate world, a whistleblower uncovering misdeeds of fraud; packed with humor, drama, sass, wit, and delicious revenge!

Tanzie Lewis was living the life of everything Houston glitz and glamour has to offer, as the wife of a successful oil executive, with the highlight of her days—competing in the country club golf championship, or lunching with her rich friends.

When her cheating husband threw her aside for a younger woman and the stock market took a dive, Tanzie was left at age 52, menopausal, and jobless. (minus her beloved dog, and left with a used Lexus, and able to fit all her worldly possessions in said car).

Escaping her friends and former life (of course they now are her husband’s friends with his new wife), she escapes to Tulsa, OK and takes a job in the internal audit department of The Bishop Group, an oil and gas company. She is not on the management team, a nobody, (if you ask her boss), residing in a cube (razor sharp, good at her job, and a plus- a great detective). Taking care of her personal appearance is last on her list, thus weight gain and some lonely nights (with of course the help of nightly cigarettes and wine).

However, she finds she gets an adrenaline rush from uncovering misdeeds and accounting irregularities within the company, with a purpose—as the suspense heats up. She is obsessed with getting to the bottom of the fraud, as she needs to be promoted and accepted to demonstrate her worth; in order to get her life back, while working with these men who are worthless and clueless.

From sneaking into offices after hours and weekends, uncover as housekeeping staff, to snatching computer passwords to privileged information—she uncovers corporate fraud, manipulation, accounting irregularities, and a cover-up! With the lack of security within the company, she manages to worm her way into their nasty company secrets by getting into emails and private conferences. (Loved it!)

After her former friends from Houston are killed in a massive pipeline explosion, due to her employer’s mistakes—she recruits her sidekick sister, Lucy (miss organic and bohemian who wants to save the earth). Tanzie learns to outsmart them all, and wins in her own brilliant way!

Of course, like most whistleblowers (I speak from experience), a company really doesn’t want to hear about the misdeeds, and accounting irregularities, as most of the executives are a part of the cover up, or they decide the brave ones coming forward with such information are labeled-problematic, and ultimately the hero or whistleblower is fired for some other bogus reason. The whistleblower has to gather as much information as possible in order to build a case while they have inside access, before they get caned, harassment begins, or the company begins deleting files, to cover their tracks.

Thank goodness The Bishop Group was a private company, not publicly traded, as I could definitely step in and help Tanzie. I find whistleblowing novels and corporate fraud (fiction or non-fiction), fascinating! I am about the underdog.

Even though this novel was leaning on the humorous side, due to the funky front cover, appealing to a wider audience; however, with a different more mysterious cover, this novel could really be an intense suspense drama  and corporate scandalous novel, as has much depth. I for one, love the details as a very analytical thinker.

Joanne Fox Phillips’ is an ideal author for this topic with an intensive background, as the director of internal audit for a midstream oil and gas company in Tulsa, Oklahoma; a CPA, certified internal auditor, and certified fraud examiner—offering great insights into the dynamics and internal tactics of corporate fraud.

I definitely look forward to more scandalous corporate suspense novels in the future from this talented author. Maybe a SOX one next?  Highly Recommend!  

Corporate fraud, or to put it in another way, white collar crime, has been around for as long as people have been engaged in commerce, which pretty much dates back to the fall. The Bible actually outlines some of the tricks that these ancient shysters used to pull, such as manipulating the weights of the scale to make their products appear more expensive than what they really were (trade and commerce worked on the weight of precious metals; the sanctuary shekal, which appears in the New Testament, was a weighting of silver).

However, come the turn of the 21st Century, a whole cottage industry was arising with books railing against corporate fraud and the misuse of corporate power, and this appears to have brought us to the brink of economic collapse. The question is whether these securities (Collateral Debt Obligations et al) were the products of fraud, or were simply misused. Well, consider that these products were incredibly risky investments, but the issuers would bundle the high grade loans (which they represented) up with a incredibly risky loans, get a ratings agency to rate them AAA, and then flog them off to unsuspecting pension funds and you pretty much have something very similar to the ancient practice of using dodgy weights and scales to get a quick profit.

Okay, this particular book has nothing to do with the issuing of high risk securities and passing them off as AAA rated products, but when this book was written the perception was that white collar crime was something that only a few rogue executives committed, and pretty much the rest of the business community where good upstanding members of society. However, this is not really the case. Written in 1989, this was a year after the Savings & Loans scandal in the US sent the west into a recession and brought about the collapse of numerous banks (including South Australia's State Bank). While this once again has a lot to do with the over indebtedness of the borrowers (which is very similar to what is happening now) many of these economic disasters do not happen through ignorance. Since people do not get to the top of the corporate ladder if they are ignorant (well, that is debatable, but let us assume that our corporate CEOs are at least above average intelligence) then there must be some complicity within the boards.

This book has a look at 14 scams that were run in Australia, and while they are generally not as far reaching as the current crisis, it goes to show how difficult it can be to pick up on fraud. To prove fraud one must be able to prove that somebody either lied, or was wilfully deceitful. While those two categories are similar, they are not identical. A lie is when you tell somebody something that you know to be untrue, whereas to be willingly deceitful one need only leave out important facts (such as the high grade loans being bundled together with risky loans). Other times it can simply be that people get caught up in promises of wealth, and when that wealth fails to eventuate, suddenly the company that we invested our lifesavings in turns out to be a house of cards, and the whole edifice collapses (obviously one of my positions is that our entire economy is a house of cards, and at this present point in time is only being propped up by government intervention, and the governments are quickly running out of ways to keep this house of cards standing).

Take Enron for example: it was an energy trading company in that it bought energy from one source, sold it to another, and kept the profit it made for itself. As they grew, they took control of the producers and distributors, but it always was little more than a middle man. However a company must continue to grow, to continue to look for ways to squeeze more profit out of a dwindling supply of resources, so they decided to play the game of rolling blackouts. They cut down on the amount of energy that was available to California forcing the price to skyrocket. As the price went up, the government had no choice but to institute price caps. That was not supposed to happen in the US, but it did, and this black swan event hit Enron so hard that the house of cards that it was was revealed and the entire edifice collapsed.

What has this got to do with White Collar Crime? Well it is an example of how endemic it actually is. Unlike what this book says, it is not a few bad apples trying to rip off consumers and governments, but it is the nature of our capitalistic society. The chase for even bigger and greater profits will always have the corrupting influence on those at the top.

I am not sure where I picked this book up but considering the age it definitely was second hand when I purchased it. However the background of how I came into possession of this book is irrelevant, except that I would no doubt have picked it up during my semi-tree-hugging-hippie phase. However, this book isn't an negative attack on the developed world (though it does raise numerous concerns as to what uncontrolled development is doing to the earth) but rather how a number of places are acting to turn the tide of destructive development.

This book was written in 1989 so it goes to show that people where concerned about uncontrolled development back then, and even before that. However since this book pre-dates the debate on man-made climate change, it looks at what I consider to be a more important aspect of development, and that is how development is slowly destroying our world.

One example is urbanisation (and I will talk about my home town of Adelaide here). Adelaide is built on a swamp, so prior to colonisation when it rained the water would come down from the hills, sink into the dirt, and disappear into the swamp. However, since development, the swamp has been drained and the Torrens River has been directed out to the sea along a canal. Thus what was originally washed down from the hills into the swamp is now sent straight out to sea. Further, as the city has been built up the patches of dirt have grown ever smaller so when rain falls instead of sinking into the dirt, it collects on the concrete and if there isn't adequate drainage then we get a flood (we saw this in Melbourne earlier this year).

Another interesting thing we see in this book is a chapter where President Mugabe is being praised. Such a book would simply not hit the bookshelves these days (so goes freedom of speech). What this book demonstrates is how power corrupts, and the same thing is happening in Venezuala. While Chavez was originally the champion of the poor (as Mugabe was) the longer he is in power, the more corrupted he becomes with his power. This has happened with Mugabe as he fights and kills his own population to keep himself in power. Every election in Zimbabwe has been preceded by violence and has resulted in violence. I guess the only person who can truly hold the title of champion of the poor is the Lord Jesus Christ.