Blog Tour/ Mandy Reviews: Terminal Value by Tom Waite

ISBN #: 978-0985025809

Page Count: 230

Copyright: March 1, 2012

Publisher: Marlborough Press; 1st Edition

Book Summary:

(Taken from Amazon)

When Dylan Johnson sells his mobile computing business to Mantric Technology Solutions - a red-hot technology firm about to go public - he thinks he and his partners will realize their wildest dreams. But, before the deal is even completed, Dylan senses that something isn't quite right. The very night of Mantric's wildly successful public offering, Dylan finds his best friend dead - and is convinced he was murdered. Dylan forms a close alliance and romantic relationship with his former partner Heather, and the two follow an electronic trail into Mantric's secrets, only to discover a betrayal they never could have imagined.

Mandy's Review:

Cover/Title

Terminal value, a financial term, of a security is the present value at a future point in time of all future cash flows when we expect stable growth rate forever (thank you, Wikipedia!).

Knowing that, I feel the beginning of understanding on why the author chose this title, but it hasn't fully hit my brain yet. I think, instead, the author took a financial term and played with it a little bit. Instead of Terminal Value meaning what it means financially, I think the author took the finance term and broke it down.

Terminal: Leading ultimately to death or fatal (i.e. terminal cancer)

Value: Relative worth, utility, or importance

These two definitions causes the title to make more sense to me after reading the book. An ingenious move on the author's part to write a book dealing with some finance issues and using a finance term for the title that ultimately needs to be broken down to get the actual meaning of the book.

By the way, if you didn't want to go through all of that to figure out the meaning of the title, the author puts the definition of Terminal Value within the first few pages:

Terminal Value: The value of an asset at the end of its useful life.

Plot

The reader enters the lives of the characters at the beginning of the MobiCelus acquisition. The founders of MobiCelus are four friends: Dylan and Tony went to college together and met Heather and Rob at a party some years later. MobiCelus had become successful on its own, but the four friends had bigger plans for the company. Thus the CEO's reasoning behind accepting Mantric's offer to buy them out.

When a small fish suddenly enters an ocean, they tend to get swallowed up by the sharks. That's what happens with MobiCelus. All of a sudden, they're now part of this huge corporation and things begin happening that don't seem quite right.

Then the CEO's, Dylan's, best friend winds up dead. Tony was one of the co-founders of MobiCelus and a technology genius. Dylan knows that Tony was murdered, but can he prove it?

With the help of Heather, another co-founder of MobiCelus, Dylan searches for clues to Tony's life right before he was killed trying to find some shred of evidence proving Tony was murdered. What he finds, though, is more than he bargained for.

Will he be successful in bringing down Tony's killers? Or will he wind up dead like Tony?

Main Characters

Dylan - MobiCelus' CEO - Dylan has the gift of gab. He's the perfect salesman. He can talk anyone into giving his small company a shot to make them money. Whereas most salesman tend to blow smoke, Dylan actually cares about his clients and he delivers on his promises.

Heather - Smart and sexy, she is Dylan's ideal dream girl ... but she's with Rob. Heather tends to think things through before acting, but can be impulsive when needed. She doesn't have a mean bone in her body. She seems to be the perfect human.

Art - Mantric's CEO - Art is manipulative, but he's also easily controlled by his CFO. He gave me the sense of being unsure of himself when dealing with employees yet authoritative and demanding when needed ... almost like he was hiding behind a facade most of the time so nobody would get to know who he really was.

Overall

From the beginning to the end, I was easily drawn in and carried along. While I don't think Thomas Waite has John Grisham's experience, I believe with time he will be called the John Grisham of the murderous technology novels. This is an excellent beginning to, what I hope is, a long writing career for Mr. Waite.