Swimming with Sharks

Swimming with Sharks is a well-constructed, superbly written crime novel - and by that measure should receive the highest rating. We're introduced immedately to Alex Sontheim, a New York investment banker as talented and successful as she is ambitious and ready to move to ever higher social circles. She has just been hired by Levy Management Investments to lead their emerging M&A capability, has been given an eye-popping salary and a boundless mandate to do deals. She then meets Sergio Vitali, an exceptionally successful real estate mogul, and immediately falls in love with him, his power and his virility. He buys her an apartment overlooking Central Park, a Porsche and squires her to every elegant function in the city. On one occasion she is introduced to Mayor Nick Kostidis whose life's work has been to totally destroy Vitali's organizaion and who warns her that her lover is a crime boss - someone to be deeply feared. She's not persuaded until she overhears him directing the murder of an adversary but by this time is almost inextricably bound into his circle of sharks.The characters are very well drawn and totally believeable although clearly falling into one of two descriptions - either good or bad - and setting up the time-honored literary struggle between right and evil. The reader easily assumes that good will triumph so arguably the end is predictable. The joy of this book, however, is the journey that gets you there. It is fast-moving, filled with killings and uncommon brutality, and sprinkled with near misses and seemingly impossible recoveries or escapes. It is complex with a significant number of characters and no immediate ablilty to identify the loyal from those receiving bribes since Vitali's reach into the city's political structure as well as various enforcement agencies is frightenly deep.Nele Neuhaus has given us a great experience. She knows New York City and the inticacies of corporate finance well, her dialogue flows gracefully even as the pace quickens, she skillfully builds and maintains tension and she is able to mix tenderness and vulnerablity with raw and despicable cruelty. This was a delightful, chilling and thoroughly enjoyable book to read.

Alex is the main character in this long story about ambition and mobsters. It is not a bad book and I do suggest it is a decent read. My main complaint is that Alex sleeps with every main character in the book. If trying to make Alex an independent successful professional was the goal, her sleeping around destroys that. And the Mayors wife and son "had to die" which is stated all the time as a reason to get the wife out of the way so Alex and Nick the mayor can sleep with each other and not be considered wrong. Nick got over murders quick and had Alex in bed faster than a New York minute. That's pretty much it.

I loved this book. I was sooo involved into the story, I dreamed about it and thought about it even several weeks after I read the book. It really had me pinned on the couch and missing lunches and dinners. I read it on vacation, so I didn't need to be anywhere, but I am sure I would have been late or would have canceled the appointment. This book was my favorite read for 2014 and I was absolutely captivated by it. I actually bought it for several of my friends too.

After reading Snow White Must Die, I HAD to read the only other English translations of this writer's books.There are 3 that I could find, and in my opinion Snow White is the best of the 3. Swimming with Sharks stumbles only once or twice with how to phrase something in spoken English but the plot more than makes up for that. I recommend it. The characters were not flat or boring, you get a brief glimpse at the high powered world of finance and the characterization of some of its "successes". Good book. Read all three!

So many flaws from one sentence to the next. For example, Alex is in the hospital and two thugs enter her room and shoot her. However, she has placed pillows under the sheets and she is hidden in the loo. Then we learn she sees the dr shot and hides. When did she have time to place the pillows?

A bit hard to swallow and frequently repetitive. Alex the heroine has more lives than James Bond. If you have plenty of time at an airport and wish to rad 500 pages plus then this long story may be for you. Implausible, predictable but still able to gain one's attention. The financial material of more interest than the gangster element which dominates. This reader was pleased to reach the inevitable conclusion.

Don't start to read this book if you don't have time to become fully engrossed. Alex is the epitome of strength, brains, ambitious goals and womanly desires. When her ambition takes her deep into the dark side of wall street, she climbs her way out the abyss with brains and fortitude.

i have read this book on kindle and could barely put my phone done, it’s a nailbiter you want to put down

Let me start by saying I absolutely love Nele Neuhaus and consider myself a fan. Her novels with Oliver von Bodenstein and Pia Kirchhoff are simply fantastic and excellently crafted (Snow White Must Die in particular is brilliant and one of the top crime reads I’ve read this year, by far).That said, this novel must have been her first attempt at writing. It almost doesn’t feel like her: where usually her characters are realistic and very well developed, here the characters are flat to the point of caricature; where she usually moves the story nimbly and keeps it exciting throughout, here the plot plods along like a herd of turtles wading through peanut butter; where usually her narrative is trim and tidy, here it is repetitive to the point where I was skipping paragraphs and pages; and where she displays a knack for surprising the reader, this story couldn’t be more predictable. Why she chose to set the story in the financial world of Wall Street when it is obvious her knowledge of it comes from a few headlines from the business section of the newspaper and the glossary of an introductory textbook I simply don’t understand. The editing doesn’t help, either (the odd change in the spelling of a character’s name or sudden inconsistencies in timings and locations are very distracting).Again, I am a fan of Neuhaus and highly recommend most of her work – just not this one. Avoid at all costs.

The best thing you can say about this novel is that it is really pacy (if you stopped for a minute to think, you'd start questioning not only the characters' motivations and their actual existence, but also whether some of the events would be actually, physically possible). This is Big Corruption in banks, police forces, New York politics and everything else, including the Mafia. There is lots of sex and violence and stereotyping. I thought about reading the Nele Neuhaus novel which everyone is raving about ("Snow White Must Die") but unless I read reviews that convince me it will be better than this one, I won't.

I wanted to know how this ended so it wasn't without merit, but otherwise for me it was very disappointing. It didn't seem decided whether to be a John Grisham style legal thriller, a Mario Puzo Mafia story, a straight thriller or a soppy romance, so it combined elements of all of these in an unsatisfying and unconvincing way. Maybe it was a first novel and the author was finding her feet but I won't be rushing to read any more.

Love Nele Neuhaus - this book is a page turner you cannot put down - as is Snow White Must Die - cannot wait to read Bad Wolf which is sitting on my bedside table. I originally bought these books as holiday reading but that did not work - thoroughly recommend her.

This book got off to a slow start, setting the scene and characters in turn if the century New York banking, but towards the end I couldn't put it down. My main problems were that all the characters were not only slightly hackneyed but also that I couldn't warm to any of them, including the main protagonist. Some of the plot lines also became increasingly unbelievable towards the end. There's also a bit of a "with one mighty bound Jack leapt free" moment right at the end. Still, as I said, a page turner at the last.