King of the Mississippi – Mike Freedman

Rating: 4.5 stars

This book surprised me two times. Once because it was lot better than I expected it to be. Second because the epilogue fell a little bit flat after my expectations got raised. It wasn’t anything thematic about the ending that was wrong, but I wanted something harder hitting. Another problem was that it was a little bit slow reading at times. I usually don’t care about that, but this felt like a book that was particularly impacted.

Okay, well, the story. Brock’s a hotshot consultant at CCG who, against his wishes, has a new competitor. Mike is ex-special forces and seems to use that in lieu of the élite education Brock expects. He is brazen and uses CCG’s desire to have a token veteran as a means of destroying Brock and undoing CCG’s work (it’ll get explained towards the end). It gets more complicated than that, but I’m kinda tired, so I’m not. But in the beginning, it kinda reminded me of the Trump vs. Cruz dynamic in 2016. Cruz had done everything ‘right’ in the sense that he had climbed the political ladder with an education and picking-and-choosing his actions very carefully. Trump came out of nowhere and seemingly out of control to dethrone Cruz. One difference is that Brock is kind a dick and knows it, but Mike fundamentally fights for what’s right.

The book is an adept criticism of modern out-of-control capitalism and Brock’s hypocrisy, his intent hate and desire to join old money. He comes from a life of privilege that he despises too.

At the end the criticism becomes more pointed, specifically at military contractors in Iraq. The story’s set in 2014, and the last third or has Brock and Mike trying to make some sense out of the mess that war profiteers have made of Iraq (reminding me especially of Jared Kushner and his designer body armor, though, undoubtedly, the book was written before that happened).

At the end, Brock and Mike escape an ambush and don’t really accomplish anything in Iraq other than humiliating a business man completely out of his depth who is pilfering what remaining oil there is in Iraq. The epilogue has Brock actually volunteering and using his time, and both Mike and Brock, no longer enemies, teaming up to start up their own something to hopefully maybe undo some of the world’s good.