Disclosure

A corporate power play between two ex-lovers. On one side is Meredith Johnson, beautiful, ambitious, ready to do anything to win the powers that be and move ahead. Then there is Tom Sanders, hard-working and capable, one-time her lover who moved city after their relationship hit the rocks on account of her infidelity. He’d nearly forgotten about her, gotten married with two kids. Several years later the high-tech multi-location company they are both working for is about to be secretly acquired by a conservative organization. But instead of Sanders getting promoted as division head, it is Meredith from another location that got the job and so arrived once more to come in contact with him, this time as his boss.

The very first day she arrived, she goes after Tom in the evening, trying to seduce him, only to claim the next day that he sexually harassed her. But rather than accept to be transferred out of town as a result of the false accusation, Tom decides to fight back, hiring a top-notch lawyer, Louise Fernandez, to represent him in a corporate sexual harassment and ill-treatment action. The battle has just begun.

After several tense days of exchanging fire, it then begins to make sense what really was happening. The big boss Garvin was backing Meredith only because it was she that found the buyer for his company. She had schemed to get Tom fired or paid off, so she could take the job he should have gotten. Her attempt at seduction on the very first day and the subsequent false accusation was part of her plan to do this. And she nearly succeeded. But in the last few climactic chapters her scheme was exposed to Tom, especially by a character in their Malaysian office who sent him evidence he needed to effectively challenge her.

A very good read, a bit similar to Airframe in plotting and characterization.

July 22, 2015. Review initially written in 2012. Novel first published in 1993; this Ballantine Books edition being published in 1994; ISBN 0-345-39105-5.