The CEO (Peter Ralph, Melbourne Books, $29.95 pb, ISBN 9781877096952, November) ***

The CEO is a pacy business thriller reminiscent of Douglas Kennedy’s The Job and some of John Grisham’s books, but with a couple of major differences: it is set in Melbourne, and in those novels, you are always rooting for the hero. She may be flawed, but in the end she comes good. In contrast, the ‘hero’ of this book is almost without redeeming qualities. As the blurb states, ‘Douglas Aspine is a cold, calculating bastard.’ The CEO is the story of how this aggressive, greedy and ambitious man lies, cheats and manipulates his way to the CEO position of an underperforming public company, and what he does once he gets there. It’s a tale of mass sackings, intimidation, insider trading, infidelity and unscrupulous behaviour—and that’s just the start.

Populated by thinly veiled versions of Australia’s most notorious white-collar criminals, it’s a page-turner about the dark side of the corporate world, and it makes compulsive reading. As his enemies gather and the desire to see him get his comeuppance increases, it’s scary to see just how much Aspine can get away with. Although The CEO is patchy in parts, and I found the ending just a little unsatisfying, it shows strong potential.

Lachlan Jobbins is an editorial consultant, freelance writer and ex-bookseller