Hey, just so you know ... this post is now about 15 years and 9 months old. Please keep that in mind as it very well may contain broken links and/or outdated information.

A courageous federal agent, a powerful and resourceful woman lawyer–only they can possibly stop the unspeakable from happening. New York City is under siege by a secret militia group–and that’s just the beginning of the relentless terror of Black Friday. While Patterson’s thriller is slightly out-of-date with its Cold War setting, it remains dramatically contemporary in its vision of a stock market thrown into chaos when a group of saboteurs blows up several Wall Street institutions.

Taking a break from my recent run of science fiction and fantasy books, I found an old (but unread by me) copy of James Patterson’s novel “Black Friday” (originally titled “Black Market”) on my bookshelf and decided to give it a go. Like the excerpt I included above mentions, the Cold War setting is a bit outdated, but considering Patterson wrote this book in the mid-80s, before 9-11 and the current economic crisis, it still seems timely and feasible.

The story opens with terrorists threatening to destroy a large swath of Wall Street in New York City that Friday evening. At first I figured the bulk of the novel would be about trying to stop the bombings (and find out who was behind them) but just pages in, boom the buildings of major financial companies (banks, etc.) in the Manhattan financial district are gone. With the threat of the collapse of the entire Western economic system hanging above their heads, anti-terrorist agent Archer Carroll and SEC investigator Caitlin Dylan find themselves traveling around the globe trying to unravel the mystery of Green Band: who are they and what do they really want?