"A Thought Provoking Character Study"

Mitch Grieff, a partner in a prestigious Manhattan accounting firm, has gone missing - at coincidentally the same time as 103 million dollars of his clients' money. The Computer Crimes Squad is on the case - but they, along with Mitch's family and partners, are baffled.

Although the search fior Mitch and the missing money largely comprise the plot of NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS, this is not a whodunit. NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS is a book about people, and it explores the backstory of those people involved - Mitch, the account who appeared to have it all and yet walked off, his wife Patricia who didn't actually notice that he had left for a month, their two sons, the drug dealer and the soap opera star, NYPD detectives Sprague and Ballestrino, and Erica King - who on the surface is incredibly dull and boring.

As a character study this is a thought provoking book. Because it is not plot driven, however, the thread of the plot is sometimes lost. Although it is the back stories of the characters that make the book, Block deals with so many characters in such a detailed way that it can become difficult to keep track. This is compoundered by the way characters disappear and reappear throughout the narrative of the book,. By nature of being a character study and not plot centric, what closure the book provides is character and not plot driven.

NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS is an excellent and thought provoking read, a character study that will leave you thinking - even after the last page has been turned.

Reviewed by Bonnie Rock
Posted July 20, 2003

Summary

With a nod to Ed McBain and Fay Weldon, author Valerie Block creates a hilarious tale of a heist gone wrong that ranges from the living rooms of Park Avenue to the parking lot of the White Castle on Queens Boulevard.

Mitch Greiff, celebrity tax accountant and partner in a prestigious Manhattan firm, hates foreign food, strange hotel rooms, and unfamiliarity. He has nightmares about learning new computer software. So when he disappears after a series of sophisticated wire transfers that siphon millions of dollars from his clients' accounts, Mitch's partners and estranged wife, Patricia, are completely astonished and confused.

Detective Dennis Sprague of the NYPD Computer Crimes Squad doesn't buy it. Why would a man who's had all the breaks in life suddenly go on the lam? Who wakes up, looks around his spacious Upper East Side co-op, gazes at his former-model wife, and says, "The hell with this—I want to live in fear!"

As Sprague investigates, he becomes convinced that Mitch Greiff must have had an accomplice. Sprague works on the assumption that there's always a girl in the picture. He looks into Patricia, but Mitch's long-suffering wife never even called Missing Persons, because she didn't miss him. So Sprague sniffs around the office eye-candy, Heather Perkins, whose signature is on all the wire transfer approvals, and who has a reputation for keeping company with the partners after hours.

And then there's Erica King, Mitch's "loophole rabbi." Sharp, dry, and meticulous, she makes up in financial acumen what she lacks in social graces. The collective assumption around the office is that the acid tongue, floor- length skirts, and dingy white tennis shoes mean that Erica is a virgin and will die that way. But Detective Sprague suspects that there is something more to Erica King than the plainest Jane in Manhattan. From elegant Park Avenue matrons to nasty asthmatic forgers in Queens, Valerie Block has created a unique cast of characters. She combines a hilarious comedy of manners with a police procedural and strikes fiction gold.