Plastic Gods
William Manchee
(Reviewer - Rebecca Brown)
2003 Top Publications Ltd
ISBN: 1929976232

A Rich Coleman Novel. When Matt Coleman devises, with his bride & a college professor, a plan to expose America's financial institutions' scheme to enslave credit card users, murder, deception & government come calling.

Plastic Gods have taken over from the Golden Calf in this modern mystery that reaches from the back rooms of America's richest banks, state & federal committee hearings & law courts.

Matt Coleman wants to make a million dollars before he's thirty. His father, Rich Coleman, whom Readers will have met in Death Pact, is surprised when Matt decides to not only become a lawyer, he chooses bankruptcy law, a lucrative sideline of his father's practice.

Along the way Matt meets Lynn, they fall in love & get married. It is after she meets Professor Swensen at SMU that she intrigues her groom into exploring what America's love affair with credit cards is doing to families, & the American way of life.

In the American way, Matt makes a television advertisement which rattles the cages of people in high finance, rousing suspicion & scrutiny from the FBI, the Capitol, & a hired assassin.

Plastic Gods is not particularly well written, there are technical blunders all over the place, such as wrong names, typos & the like ... & it direly needs the ministrations of an editor -- hence the 2 stars. I couldn't “see” anyone -- William Manchee wastes few words in describing friend or foe. The narrative switches from Rich's involvement to Matt's, to following everyone else ... however ... & this is a huge HOWEVER ... what Plastic Gods is all about is interesting & important!

Plastic Gods has a lot to think about, especially our addiction to credit cards. It is for anyone struggling with thousands of dollars of debt; for anyone facing a lifetime of interest payments; for anyone living beyond their means & realizing what the great American Dream is costing them. It is also a dangerous book, so be warned, this is a subversive novel that touches just about everyone with a bank account & debt!

Novel though it be, Plastic Gods will have you looking at your finances in a whole new way!

More from William Manchee:
Twice Tempted
Ca$H Call: A Stan Turner Mystery
Second Chair
Yes, We're Open: Defending the Small Business Under Siege, & more.
(02/22/04)

Rebecca