This writer is looking for an agent.

Recruited by a secretive hedge fund, Lem Pappas drops out of MIT and enters a world of astonishing wealth and well-concealed conspiracies, where the client list is kept extremely confidential — for a very good reason.

Lem believes he's helping develop an investment model that can deliver extraordinary "risk free" profits. Yet when the firm implodes amid a far-reaching criminal investigation, he suddenly finds himself at the center of a massive fraud. Fleeing from creditors, cops, and highly compensated killers, he takes refuge with his wife at a small cabin in the Adirondacks, where he learns how to survive — in a desperate fight for his life — with the assistance of some surprising allies.

THE END OF ALPHA is a literary thriller about an honest man among the wolves of Wall Street, a gifted mathematician who discovers that even the smallest miscalculation can have deadly consequences.

Author John Powers began researching this timely debut long before Bernie Madoff made front-page headlines, during his decade-long career as a private investigator and corporate intelligence analyst. He has executed confidential assignments for financial institutions, multinationals, major law firms, military and government agencies. He holds a fine arts degree from Columbia.

“Everyone suspects himself of at least one of the cardinal virtues, and this is mine: I am one of the few honest people that I have ever known. [The End of Alpha] is an entertaining, suspenseful, and thoroughly damning novel of the new American aristocracy. Un-put-downable.” — Nick Carraway, bond trader, West Egg, N.Y.

“Paranoid conspiracies with real-life parallels... Packed with insights about the shadowy world of hedge funds.” — Mitchell Y. McDeere, Bendini, Lambert & Locke, Memphis, Tenn.

“A devil of a tale.” — Sherman McCoy, Pierce & Pierce, New York, N.Y.

“In light of recent events on Wall Street, some readers (myself included) may find the most satisfying aspect of the story to be watching feckless 20-odd-year-old billionaires get their comeuppance. Greed is indeed an exquisite disease. Violence, it seems, is a promising cure.” — Patrick Bateman, Pierce & Pierce, New York, N.Y.

“Talent. What is talent? I don't believe in talent. I believe in stubborn persistence, late hours and lucky breaks. I believe in John Powers. I believe in this book.” — Eric Packer, Packer Capital, New York, N.Y.