The Deal by Adam Gittlin

Jonah Gray is a rising star in the world of New York Real Estate brokers. High dollar deals, women, booze, and drugs dominate his life. Then the opportunity of a lifetime comes his way. An old friend who owns a multi-billion dollar Russian oil company contacts him. It seems that his friend has decided to diversify his holdings and wants to invest in real estate. This is a huge deal There is only one hitch. The deal has to take place in three weeks. Jonah and the other associates at the small firm where he works go after this deal with everything they’ve got.

Then, without warning, everything starts to fall apart. He is used to juggling his job and his lifestyle, but when he meets a girl who seems to good to be true the lifestyle comes crashing in on him. On top of that he is unwittingly dragged into a heist. Now, as he scrambles to keep his life from falling apart and to make this deal happens he learns that you have to be careful who you trust and that everything that he knows is true may be built on lies.

The Deal is a fast paced, interesting novel. I have to be honest and say that I didn’t like the book very much at first. The story is told as a first person narrative. When the book begins Jonah Gray is a dope snorting, weed smoking, alcoholic, womanizer whose repulsive personality is only matched by his excessive ego. So when you have an immoral narcissist as your narrator the story can get old quick. I pushed on through and I found myself enjoying the story. There are a lot of plot twists and turns. At one point they can seem almost absurd when you look at them from the outside, But it works very well in the novel.

The author, Adam Gittlin, works in the world of commerical real estate so the parts of the novel dealing with that world are very informative. The characters are not very sympathetic at first, but that just gives Gittlin a lot of room to develop these characters. He does this very well. By the end of the book you find yourself interested in Jonah Gray. The Deal is full of surprises and plot twists. Overall it is a very good book. I recommend the book to anyone who enjoys a good thriller. The next Gray novel is scheduled to release in March. I look forward to reading it.