Friday, May 15, 2015

REVIEW: The Tipping Point (+$50 Amazon GC Giveaway!)

Title: The Tipping Point
Author: Walter Danley
Series: N/A
Pages: 352
Date Published: May 1st, 2013
Publisher: Marble Arch Communications
Format: Kindle
Genre: Thriller
Source: Goddess Fish Blog Tours

Synopsis:
When Tom Burke dies skiing Aspen Mountain, his business partner Garth Wainwright must find his killer. Burke was murdered, and Wainwright seeks the cause. Cautioned to leave it to the authorities, Wainwright won’t let go. His two closest partners, Tom Shaw and Robert Keating don’t believe his suspicions. Searching for the killer unearths a conspiracy of millions of embezzled dollars and partner collaboration. Whom can he trust?

Suddenly, a second partner is murdered. The fraud and the murders are connected. Exposure of the fraud will destroy the company; the SEC will shut it down. Wainwright is concerned for his personal safety and net worth. One of his partners is a killer.

When Wainwright falls in love with Lacey Kinkaid, a former Boston criminal prosecutor, they devise a plan to smoke out the guilty partners, without exposing the fraud to the SEC & FBI. A perilous dance of deception implements the complicated strategy. The plan forces the killer to surface … and then … another partner dies.

Partner Bennie Rubens contracted the murders from Ariel Amiti, an ex-Israeli major, former Mossad agent and assassin. Rubens escapes to the Bahamas, accompanied by Wainwright’s former lover, BJ Dreaver. Wainwright and the FBI are close on his trail.

Ten business partners succumb in four assassinations, one suicide, and three bankruptcies leaving Wainwright and Shaw to exorcise greed, complicity, and fraud and restructure the company to its former acclaim.
~My Thoughts~
Garth Wainright is like the Christian Grey of high-finance. He's wealthy, he's suave, but his co-workers are being murdered left and right and he's not really sure what to do about it. Part procedural drama, part murder-mystery, teensy bit romance, this book has a lot and then some to make even the most picky reader find something that they will enjoy. 

Garth's personality was a bit dry in his delivery. I liked him and he had a strong and honest figure to him that made him seem like the good boy-scout...or sexy boy next door. He did read a bit like a goody-two-shoes, but that got better as the book moved along, and it was fun to see how clever he was. The romance between Garth and Lacey was sweet and realistic...with lots of quips and sass along the way that made  you kind of want them to just get it on already. I actually think that the character development of Garth from beginning to end was my favorite, closely followed by Garth and Lacey's relationship. 
If I could think of one word to describe The Tipping Point, it would be "Wordy". While that can be a good thing, in this instance it may have hurt the book in my opinion. The book felt like someone was trying to describe the scene rather than just describing it. Sentences would meander around, sometimes making sense...other times not so much. I felt like the ideas were strong, and they were heavily present in the author's tone...but sometimes he got a bit tripped up in what he was trying to say, and simply forgot to say it. 

The visuals were nice though. You really feel the cut of the wind or the ice, and the burn of heat and salt on skin. Thoughts, music, description all blended beautifully to create an imitation of life that was quite flawless. This lent itself to the plot as well, and with each new development, each new clue, you felt yourself unraveling the mystery and moving forward in a rush to solve the crime!
~Try an Excerpt!~
Burke crested the ridge and shot down the exposed slope at top speed. The trail’s steepest section was a windblown, naked mountainside where icy wind crusted the snow into a slick, slippery stretch. Burke concentrated hard to keep his skis under him on the sheer incline. He leaned low, edging his skis into the hill. Burke heard the wind in his ears and the chattering steel cutting ice. He skied toward the spot where the trail turned back into the forest, across the ridge, and through a stand of mature Aspen.
~Meet Walter!~ 
Danley’s blue-collar background is far from the high-flying characters of The Tipping Point. He was born an Indiana Hoosier before Danley’s family moved to California when his father took employment as a machinist in a World War II defense plant. 

Following D-Day, Walter Sr. reasoned that returning service men and women passing through the beautiful state of California might want to live there. He decided to be a home building contractor. His idea was good; the small error was that Danley’s dad built houses one at a time while contractors on the east coast built thousands at a time. However, this is the environment that young Walter grew up in; construction and real estate. 

Much later, Walter served his country as a U.S. Navy Hospital Corpsman. After Corp School Danley, thinking Medical Doctor as his career goal, enrolled in a specialist school as an Operating Room Technician (read scrub nurse) and transferred to the San Diego Naval Hospital. 

He had the good fortune to work on the sixth floor Sick Officers Quarters with the Navy’s best. It is the Chiefs of Staff for each service; Orthopedics, Oncology, Internal Medicine, and others that tend to the patients in SOQ, and this became fodder for his fantasized future career. 

The US Navy had little interest in his post-Naval plans. Danley was eventually transferred to the Fleet Marine Force as a Medic at U.S. Marine Corps’ Weapons Training Battalion, San Diego. Young Marine Corp recruits spent weeks training with the Corp’s small arms weapons. With live ammunition in the hands of trainees, a Medic was required to be on duty on the firing range. The author reports that there are many stories from the firing range and that some of these will undoubtedly find their way into future Danley novels! 

Following an honorable discharge and with a new wife, he found his way back to the construction industry, selling kitchen cabinets to tract house and apartment builders. With bidding new construction projects and attending college at night, it left little time to help his wife raise his first two sons. 

It was at this time Danley was recruited to join a commercial real estate firm. The first few years were spent in the land business, managing sales crews on projects as varied as raw acreage, improved lots and commercial land suitable for shopping centers or industrial parks. That set the stage for moving into income properties. Danley spent most of his working career on the investment side of this business. 

Danley’s five grown sons have parented many grandchildren for him while building their own successful careers. He credits their mother’s outstanding child rearing skills together with the wonderful influence of their stepmother, Christopher Norris—a Broadway, film, and television actress—for the fine family with which he is blessed. Walter and Christopher were married for eighteen years, during the boys’ formative years. She remains a good friend to the boys and Walter. 

Danley reignited his education in mid-career at Pepperdine University’s Graziadio School of Business and Management, earning an MBA. Encouraged by the Pepperdine experience, he pursued a terminal degree in Management Theory at the Peter F. Drucker School of Management at Claremont Graduate School of Business.

A four-decade veteran of real estate investments on a national platform, Danley authored the course, Creative and Unconventional Finance and taught it at five campuses of the University of California Extension School for several years. During that period, Danley served on the UCLA Real Estate Advisory Board. 

Walter lives in the Texas Hill Country, where he works on Inside Moves, the sequel to his suspense thriller, The Tipping Point. He confides that the Inside Moves will test his protagonist in ways unimagined in earlier works. Beyond that novel in Danley’s work in process and scheduled for release in 2016, is an as yet untitled stand-alone mystery. Danley describes it as a historical western but with a fantasy twist.
Walter will be awarding a $50 Amazon or B/N GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour.

45 comments:

  1. Replies
    1. Good luck Simon. Thanks for stopping bye this morning.
      Walter

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  2. Replies
    1. Hey Goddess': You two have done such a marvelous job organizing this tour for me. Thank you for all your hard work and for finding terrific hosts, like Andra.
      Walter

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  3. Sounds like this book would make for an awesome TV series! Did you feel the same? If so, who would you cast as Garth?

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    1. Liana, that wonderful thought would be disaster for the Wainwright Mystery series! My ex, Christopher, starred in CBS' Trapper John, MD for 7 years. If I had to write 22 episodes for TV every year the sequel would never get finished. I only need 2 more chapters to finish the 1st draft and send to my beta readers for feed-back, so, no weekly episodic writing for me, thank you very much!
      Walter

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  4. "... She remains a good friend to the boys and Walter." I'm glad. Takes lots of work sometimes, but is definitely worth it....

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    1. Hi Laney: Thanks for stopping by. And yes, Christopher remains an important part of our family. Your profile photo looks like a Golden Retriever. My fav! Anniversary Six, in the story was modeled after the real Annie Six, which was my gift tjo Christopher on our 6th anniversary. Later, we adopted Sundance and they became the best pals ever. I do love Goldens!
      Walter

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  5. Lots of luck! thanks for stopping this morning.
    Walter

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  6. Replies
    1. Thanks Rita. I'll bet that you'll like reading better than listening to it! I hope you enjoy it and are entertained.
      Walter

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  7. Thanks so much for the chance to win! Happy Friday!

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    1. Happy Friday to you as well, Amanda! Thanks for stopping bye to say hello.
      Walter

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  8. Great review. This really sounds like an exciting mystery.

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    1. Hey MomJane: (My 97 year-old Mother better not hear about me calling you that!)
      Thanks for the stop buy to say HI. I'm so glad that you like Andra's review of The Tipping Point: A Wainwright Mystery. I hope that if you do read it you will share your thoughts with me . Th contact information is in the back of the print edition and if the eBook. Thanks
      Walter,

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  9. Tipping Point sounds like an interesting book. Thanks for the introduction to a new to me author!

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    1. Hi Glenda and thanks for stopping by Andra's blog. I'm pleased to be here and meet her friends that share some thoughts about the review and my novel. Of course, I'm hardly objective, but "interesting" is a good label to put on a complex plot with several major characters and an international canvas. I'll buy interesting and hope that the novel lives up to your expectations. I'd love to hear your thoughts.
      Walter

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  10. Replies
    1. Hello Mr./Ms./Mrs bgu100: Glad you dropped in. I think I ran into your next door neighbor, Ms. 99 down to the supermarket! Suspenseful? You have no idea! And, if I may say so, you'll be on the edge of your seat until the end. The only thing more suspenseful is the sequel and I'm anxious to get back to finishing the 1st draft for the beta readers. That is my acid test!
      Walter

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  11. Sounds like an interesting book! Thanks for sharing it and the giveaway!

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    Replies
    1. You are most welcome, Eva. Thank you for stopping in to say hi. I hope you'll get the chance to read the novel.
      Walter

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  12. The book sound great! I love a good mystery. Thank you for the post and the giveaway!

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    1. Hi Ree: Thanks for your comment and for stopping in. Good luck in the drawing. Hope you have the chance to read the novel and confirm that it is what you heard. It is a good mystery. Take care,
      Walter

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  13. Thanks for the giveaway! I like the excerpt. :)

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  14. Glad you like the excerpt. I may be guilty of prejudice, but reading the novel is so much more fulfilling! Thanks for taking the time to comment.
    Walter

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  15. Hi Patrick: I appreciate your visit to the blog. I hope that you will consider reading the book. Take care and have a terrific weekend.
    Walter

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  16. Replies
    1. Hi Mary: Good of you to stop by. I appreciate your kind words. Have a terrific weekend.
      Walter

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  17. Replies
    1. Hello Simon: It is nice of you to pop in and say Hi. Thank you for the kind words, but if you liked the excerpt, you'll love the book. Give her a try. I'd be interested in your opinion
      Walter

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  18. Is there a certain type of scene that's harder for you to write than others? Love? Action? Racy?

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    1. Mai, I don't know that I'd say one is "harder" but I confess I have less confidence in a scene that is sexually charged. I'm not a virgin, by any means, but I find it some how intrusive to model a scene on personal experiences.

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  19. Sounds like an interesting book!

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    Replies
    1. Hi Stephane: Thanks for stopping in to say Hello.

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  20. Sounds like a wonderful novel to read. I loved the excerpt and the cover is very nice.

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    1. Hey John: Thank you for the kind words. I hope that you will read The Tipping Point and have your first impressions confirmed! Best to lyou,
      Walter

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  21. Thank you so much Andra for a wonderful review tour. I appreciate all your hard work and definitely want to stay in touch.. This was fun, so let's do it again!
    Walter

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  22. That has to be the longest author bio I have ever read. Wish the author much success on his newest work being released next year.

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    1. Hey Katieoscarlet; Do you think the bio should be shorter? What must I leave out? When you've lived as long as I, the thing just keeps getting longer!

      Your comment brings to mind the scene in Amadeus when Emperor Joseph II says to Mozart,:" My dear young man, don't take it too hard. Your work is ingenious. It's quality work. And there are simply too many notes, that's all. Just cut a few and it will be perfect."
      Mozart's retort, ": Which few did you have in mind, Majesty?

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  23. Replies
    1. Thanks Simon. I appreciate the kind words. Now, if only there were in a review posted ata Amazon, Goodreads, LibraryThing or maybe . . .

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  24. OMG, luv the excerpt & cover. Divine. Splendid. Wow, prize amazon gc is fab. & splendid. 2 fingers snap. It is tight, fly & off the chain. Thank you for the awesomeness, the contest, and generosity. :) Pick me, pick me! Dear Santa: I’ve been nice. My X-Mas wish this year is to win this contest. Starving artist here desperately needs the Amazon gc to shop and eat. A life changing exp.

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    1. Hi Edmond: Thanks for stopping in to say Hello and to dazzle us with your witty prose.Good luck in the drawing. We'd hate to see your crumpled corpse curled on a concrete. But, please, if you are the winner, buy fresh leafy green vegetables instead of the Milk Duds you've been popping.

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  25. Ohh I love this kind of stories. Interesting. :D

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  26. I enjoyed reading the excerpt and learning about the book, thank you!

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